


The Inheritance Game

by theAlmostPorcupine



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: F/M, Gen, Inheritance, Money, Not choose your own adventure though, POV Experimental, POV First Person, POV Second Person, POV Third Person Omniscient, Toons - Freeform, You choose the ending, small hints of BendyxAlice, young adult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2020-03-19 21:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 49,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18978601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theAlmostPorcupine/pseuds/theAlmostPorcupine
Summary: Once again, you ask Uncle Joey what this has to do with anything.He meets your eyes. “When I go, I want to leave my business to you – all my brands and properties. Everything I own.”Everything? You want it, don’t you? Do you think you can handle all that responsibility?He leans forward. “But-”Of course there’s a but.***Eighteen years ago, Bendy disappeared, and Joey Drew wants his Bendy back.





	1. In Which Alice Saves Mischief for Demons

You’re following Thomas Connor toward a job interview when Alice Angel splashes coffee on your shirt and says, “Oops! Too cold? Sorry, we can’t have hellfire up here.”

Frowning, you reach for your handkerchief and dab at your shirt. “Is that what you think of humans? You treat all employees this way?”

She narrows her eyes. “No, I save it for demons.”

“Demons?” You stare at the Toon. “You don’t even know me! Is this ‘cause I’m related to your boss?”

Tom steers you away from the angel. “Joey! Your nephew’s here. I thought you said none of the Toons were supposed to bother him yet.”

Your uncle wheels out, frowns at Alice, looks at you, and grins. “You’re early! I wasn’t expecting you for another….” He stops and checks his watch. His eyes widen. “Is that the time? Ah, ten minutes early. Just as expected. Go on in and take a seat. I need to talk to Alice and get some things for you.”

The angel glares at him.

Ignoring this, you walk in and take a plain wooden chair.

Every family has that one crazy uncle. The one who teases. The one who’s just strange. The one who backs up your dad’s tall tales with his own spin. Your parents moved across the country when you were young, but from what you can tell, Joey Drew is your crazy uncle. What you know about Uncle Joey is that he’s rich. Famous. Influential. And he’s offering you a job while you’re in college.

That alone makes him more supportive of your decision to come back here than your parents are.

As you wait, you let yourself look around your uncle’s office. Will you find any red flags? Anything that will make you groan? Or any hints of a golden relationship waiting to profit your life? What is it you’re hoping for?

Uncle Joey’s desk shines and boasts standing photo frames and a new telephone. His bulletin board overstocks letters and awards. And painted on the wall behind your uncle’s old-man chair is a grinning, black-and-white demon face.

After several minutes, your uncle returns to his office and sets a stack on his desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting, bucko.”

In the stack, you see a contract, a thick manila folder, and some free demon merch. You set the wheels in your head turning. How much are you willing to let your uncle help you through college? How much can you get? How sure are you that you want to study business? Are you willing to let Uncle Joey teach you?

Just why is he retrieving a costume from his desk drawers anyway?

You eye a full-coverage mask.

“It’s not the extra-special costume I’m having prepared for you, but it will have to do for a few weeks.”

You can smell the old sweat from your seat. What does it remind you of? Gym class? Uniforms? The time you got stuck doing laundry for the rest of the theater club?

You stare. “I gotta admit that’s not the type of job I was expectin’. What character is that anyway? He looks like I should know him.”

“That’s Bendy.”

Bendy? Of course.

You shiver. Bendy’s face has disappeared from the public consciousness, but his name is still well known. But what do you do when something makes you nervous? “You want me to play a villain? I was hopin’ for somethin’ a little more… business. An assistantship or somethin’.”

Your uncle laughs. “I think you’ll enjoy this job. Are you scared? There’s no need for that. You’ll be great!”

So you’re sitting at a job interview, and it’s not going at all like you expected. Is this an offer along a dream career path you thought stupid to pursue? Is it an option you’d never seriously considered? Is it a lack of self-confidence holding you back? Of vision? Of passion? Or is it that you’re set on doing business?

When you hesitate to speak, your uncle fills in the silence. “It’s been too long not having Bendy at the studio, so I say it’s high time to bring him back. I dug out an old costume and had a high school student play him, just for the summer. But this role, it was meant for you. And you were meant for it.”

You crinkle your nose. “Is Bendy a demon or a rotten egg?”

Your uncle puts the costume away. “I’ll send it through dry cleaning again. See if I can get more of the smell out. It’s just for a few weeks, then you’ll have your own costume.”

You frown.

Uncle Joey slides the manila folder toward you. “Here. Your dad asked me to show you something. I was going to fly out for that, but since you’re in my neck of the woods, there’s nothing for it but to show you and have you come work for me.”

What can you make of his logic?

In the front of the folder are taped a directory and a metal key. The directory has a room number and a list of audio logs by Bendy, your dad, and a bunch of people whose names you don’t recognize.

There’s a stack of papers inside the folder too. The first is a letter with distinctively hooked handwriting.

Eyes wide, you jump to the signature: Cat Earrin’.

Cat’s that lifelong friend you can only talk to because of the wonders of modern communication. Telephones and delivery speeds and stuff. You’ve never met, but you like some of the same things. And yet you live in two different worlds: you’re human, and she’s a Toon. “What’s a letter from Cat doin’ in here?”

Joey sets his elbow on the desk. “Well, she wasn’t part of my studio yet, so I couldn’t ask her to make an audio log.”

> Dear Mr. Drew,
> 
> Because ye are worried about me mate, Bendy….

Uncle Joey starts talking as you read Cat’s letter. “I’ve been to PirateTime Studios several times since I bought it out….”

  


Document 1 – an old letter that Cat Earrin’ wrote in reply to Uncle Joey.

Document 2 – a newspaper article about a cartoon puppy who was made real.

Document 3 – a typed confession sent to PirateTime Studios. Its signature is blacked out.

Document 4 – a black-and-white photograph of a pen-like gun. It has a transparent barrel filled with bright powder.

  


PirateTime Studios has surprisingly large grounds, covered in trees and bushes. It has a barbed-wired fence to keep intruders out now, but it didn’t nineteen years ago. It used to be that anyone could walk onto the premises.

Some of the trees would have been much smaller back then, but they must have been giants to a small little Toon named Pirate Pup. He was a young bull terrier with a black bandana on his head, and he always showed the biggest imagination in his cartoons: there was a time he caught a swordfish, and like all young boys, used it to show off his untrained fencing prowess. There was a time he was marooned on a desert island and imagined a rock to be his faithful pet. There were the times he lay atop his ship’s cabin and spent the day dreaming of being the richest pirate in the world.

Now that’s a good word: dreaming. Dreaming! Dreaming! Dreaming! It makes you wonder what he could have been in Sillyvision.

Anyway, he was playing outside on that December 1 of nineteen years ago. It was after five o’clock, so the sun was down and only the Toons and the overtime workers were around. And it was cold – the ground would have been covered in crisp white snow if we’d had our first snowfall of the too-soon approaching winter. But not yet. Instead, the leaves lay as crushed as a lost visionary’s spirit.

  


You interrupt as kindly as you can. Are you the type to love a good story? Or are you the type who prefers efficiency? You’re somewhere along that spectrum, but what you want now are the answers to your burning questions.

With what you hope is the tone of a confident adult, you ask your uncle what’s on your mind. And you ask what Pirate Pup has to do with anything.

Uncle Joey puts an elbow on the desk and leans toward you. The lights catch in his eyes. “I hear you want to study business. I also hear you enjoyed your part in _Finian’s Rainbow._ ”

You do. You did. But are those things you’re good at? Are those things you like about yourself? What are those things you’re best at? What have you decided their roles are in your life?

Once again, you ask Uncle Joey what this has to do with anything.

He meets your eyes. “When I go, I want to leave my business to you – _all_ my brands and properties. Everything I own.”

Everything? You want it, don’t you? Do you think you can handle all that responsibility?

He leans forward. “But-”

Of course there’s a but.

“-there are still Toons that live in my studios. I cannot let you inherit anything unless you understand company history and have a deeply compassionate relationship with the Toons. The older Toons at PirateTime Studios remember Pirate Pup, and the Detooner that got him – well, he was important in understanding a certain little devil’s story as well.”

Uncle Joey’s big enough to buy out several smaller companies. He himself is worth several million dollars. The only way to convince him to keep you as his heir is to humor him, isn’t it?

“Compassion, huh? Is that why you want me to portray Bendy?”

Your uncle points to a picture that goes along with a newspaper article. It shows a bull terrier puppy in the arms of a teary-eyed bull terrier Toon. “That’s Pirate Pup and his mother, Diggie Dog.”

Diggie has a black spot around her eye that resembles an eye patch, but Pirate Pup is pure white, interrupted only by the black bandana around his head and the skull-and-crossbones collar around his neck. His head is raised up, and his tongue is out, licking his mother’s blouse.

You copy your uncle’s cool posture and easy-going face, hoping you’re getting it. You pull what you call your thousand-watt grin on him. “And you’re not going to tell me who got him?”

“It was someone who paved a road to hell with good intentions before he saw the light.” Your uncle has a funny look on his face. “But not all the Detooners were and the damage is already done. I want all my Toons to have their own lives and bodies. That’s why I need you here.”

This path to money isn’t going to be easy, is it? But is it worth it? Or are the Toons worth it? You have a friend among them. “What were you saying about Pirate Pup?”

  


Pirate Pup was skipping rope, and the last leaves rustled and crunched underfoot. He was alone.

Or almost. There was another Toon across the grounds, but the show cast him and her in opposing roles, so they tended to avoid each other in real life.

This coast hadn’t had Detooners go beyond petitions and protests yet, so PirateTime Studios felt no need to supervise the puppy. The puppy must have felt safe enough that when a stranger showed up, he greeted him with a wagging tail and a friendly word.

The stranger wore a smile and an oversized trench coat. One that was very trendy but made him look like an idiot. It had pockets at waist level, in which he had his hands out of the cold, and the one curled around his pen-like detooning gun.

The Detooner sat down to chat with Pirate Pup, and he soon had him agreeing that it would be fun to be a real puppy. Knowing the Toon’s love for imagination, he suggested a game in which they’d pretend that Pirate Pup was a normal dog out to give his walker a difficult job.

They used the rope as a leash and took a wild walk to the edge of the property. The Detooner jokingly scolded the “bad dog” and tied him to a tree as punishment.

BANG!

Pen guns aren’t as loud as other guns, but they’re loud enough: the sound ripped through the Detooner’s heart, and he knew it was a matter of moments before someone came to investigate. Already, he could hear a cat yowling, and Pirate Pup was barking at his retreating back.

He pulled his coat up over his head and booked it back to his car.

He never noticed his witness overhead.

Up in a tree was the other Toon who was out on the grounds that night: a sphinx cat with a hoop earring in one ear – yes, Cat Earrin’.

Luckily for the Detooner, all Cat saw was that he was a man with a dark coat. She trembled as his engine revved, and she only came down when his car squealed away.

By then, the Toons and the over-timers were pushing each other out the studio doors. Cat joined them in rushing over to the barking puppy.

She’d later claim that she swaggered over to lead the way to check on Pirate Pup. She’s always been reluctantly loyal – even to coworkers she doesn’t like, but her self-image was no more accurate back then than it is now. It’s more likely she was, as the newspaper describes, “a shell-shocked new Toon running to her makers for safety.”

All accounts say she stuck close to one of the script writers as the group made their way to the property’s edge.

When they got close, they found a little white puppy made of flesh and fur instead of ink.

Cat was new enough to the world that she didn’t know why everyone was upset until Diggie took the puppy in her arms and started crying her son’s name. It shook Cat’s world and challenged her assumptions about the nature of reality, so she grabbed her writer friend and told him all she knew of what happened. There may have been big fat inky tears involved.

The writer patted her back and gave her some more realistic assumptions she could count on. He couldn’t say anything about humanity as a whole, but he personally promised he would always be there for the PirateTime Toons like Cat Earrin’ and Diggie Dog.

Unfortunately for Cat, Diggie heard her account too, and she was looking for someone to blame. And Cat was cast as an antagonist on their show at the time. Diggie yelled at Cat. She called her a coward. She blamed her for being outside and not preventing the tragedy. She told her she’d always be an enemy to PirateTime.

Cat argued back, but the studio workers broke up the argument to ask Cat a few questions.

Afterward, they told their Toons about the Detooners. They emphasized that the tragedy wasn’t Cat’s fault – she could only have been detooned too – but Diggie didn’t see it that way.

  


Document 5 – A group picture under a set of reels that say Joey Drew Studios.

Document 6 – A picture of two Toons being silly. On the back is written _Bendy and Boris’s first Christmas._

Directory Entry 1 – Audio Tape 1. Voice of Henry Stein. Subject: Toon Safety. December 4.

Directory Entry 2 – Audio Tape 2. Voice of Joey Drew. Subject: Toon Safety. December 4.

Directory Entry 3 – Audio Tape 3. Voice of Norman Polk. Subject: Toon Safety. January 2.

Directory Entry 4 – Audio Tape 4. Voice of Wally Franks. Subject: Toon Safety. January 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question of the week:
> 
> Where do you imagine Boris is about now?
> 
> Next time:
> 
> See the documents.
> 
> Disclaimer:
> 
> This fan work is not an official part of Bendy and the Ink Machine or related properties.


	2. In Which You Could Smell Newspapers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> You show up for a job interview and get offered the role of Bendy and a conditional inheritance from your uncle.

Rumors flew through Sillyvision on Monday, thanks to the story the paper ran on Pirate Pup. People should work hard, work happy, don’t you think? But the new development derailed production.

Of course, some employees were happy about the detooned puppy. Not everyone in the studio was comfortable with Toons having spontaneously come to life that April.

But many employees weren’t happy about the detooned puppy. These were safer people to have around the Toons, but their unhappiness didn’t make for the best work conditions either.

Regardless, there were so many copies of the story that you could smell newspapers throughout the studio almost as well as the ink used to make cartoons, even in the art department.

The smell even showed up in the break rooms! On the top floor used to be a break room for inkers, animators, and anyone who was testing picture quality. Its only entrance was down a flight of stairs. At the bottom were several round tables where employees could sit and chat or whatever they felt like if they weren’t up for a game of darts.

There was a Christmas special in production, and the projectionist, Norman Polk, had been testing the footage for it.

 

Your uncle points at the photo.

Norman is that scrawny guy with dark hair in the back. The one spying on the other employees instead of looking at the camera.

Pulling his finger away, Uncle Joey says, “He was the quiet sort always lurking in the shadows – the type the other employees found a little weird – but he was on speaking terms with some of them regardless. And he never minded Wally Franks, our janitor. He’d been cleaning the studio entrance that day.

Even before your uncle points him out, you have a good guess who Wally is. He’s that guy with the big goofy grin who is leaning on that mop. The one with the half-tucked shirt and the keys about to fall from his belt.

 

Both Norman and Wally were on break, and they were talking about what everyone else was talking about.

They were both aware of two people who didn’t know what was in the paper: at the time, the first two Sillyvision Toons were living in Joey Drew Studios, Bendy and Boris. Norman and Wally were arguing about who ought to tell them about the Detooners.

Norman thought it was the Toons’ creators’ job to tell them.

Wally insisted that someone – anyone – who cares should warn them as soon as possible. Since he said it over and again, in his tape too, he probably shouted something like, “PirateTime Studios is only five miles from here. And there’s a Detooner running amuck! If we don’t start takin’ better care of our Toons, I’m outta here!”

The argument was loud enough to carry down the halls and into the inking rooms. Someone must have asked Henry, who was the head animator at the time, to break it up.

Back then, he was a well-fed guy with pressed clothes that were constantly covered in ink spots.

 

In the company photo, he is hiding his shirt by leaning around his best friend’s shoulders. His smile still lights his eyes.

“Hold on. The Toons ain’t in this picture.” You set the company photo aside and put the Toons’ picture down in front of you instead. Both Toons are indoors, wearing holiday hats.

First, you point to a grinning demon riding a bike with training wheels. He’s looking at the camera instead of where he’s going, and he’s about to run over the other Toon’s foot. “That’s Bendy.”

Moving your finger, you say, “That must be Boris.”

Boris is a humanoid wolf with a pair of patched overalls. He’s sitting at a table, feet spread wide, and reaching inside a stocking labeled as Bendy’s.

“You ever seen any of the cartoons?”

Shaking your head, you say, “Wouldn’t I of known Bendy on sight if I had? Could anyone forget him?”

“Fair point. I’ll have to show you some shorts sometime. Anyway, when Henry found Norman and Wally arguing….”

 

Henry walked over to Norman and Wally, pressed his palms to the table, and insisted the Toons were children. He pointed out that the Detooners on the other side of the country had participated in bloody murders rather than stopping at detooning, and Bendy and Boris would be terrified if they heard about those.

As long as their lives weren’t in danger, he didn’t want to tell them.

But Henry, he was finishing up extra sketches that week because he was anticipating that he’d take some extra time off after the holidays – his wife was due to have their first child.

 

Uncle Joey gestures toward the ceiling. “I wanted to check on his progress, so I was upstairs looking for him.”

You look back to the company photo. If Uncle Joey needed to access the break room, and it was only accessible by stairs, could he have done it back then?

He’s still in a wheelchair, but his legs look meatier, less dilapidated, than they do now. On one of them, you make out a brace strapped to his silver slacks.

Frowning, you look at the Toons’ picture again. “I was born about that time. Did I meet them?”

Uncle Joey smiles. “You had several Toons wrapped around your little finger. That’s why Cat’s been writing to you – she didn’t like the thought of being separated from her littlest buddy.”

Everyone was an infant once. You know that. But maybe Cat and Joey Drew Studios and the others have baby pictures of you. Embarrassing ones. Ones where you were crying. Ones where you were messy. Ones where you were being a little stinker. How is it that they see you? Do you really want to know?

You change the subject by asking your uncle to continue the story.

 

So I was upstairs looking for Henry, and all the interns tell me he’s straightening out a couple of hotheads in the break room.

Imagine my surprise when I find out that creepy-quiet Norman was involved in an argument. Anyway, I limped down the stairs and backed Henry up. “There is absolutely no need to scare the Toons,” I said. “Let them enjoy their dreams and their childhood. It’s up to us adults to keep them safe. All we need to do is use a little magic, and I can handle that.”

It wasn’t as though I trusted my employees to break the news to the Toons without traumatizing them.

I sent Norman and Wally back to work, but I took Henry aside before he could finish the shorts.

After asking about his extra work, I squeezed his shoulder. “I can’t say I blame them for talking about that puppy. Who wants to believe their hard work can come to life, and then stop being a person? That’s not a dream.”

Henry looked away. “I’m worried about them too. Are you sure we’re protecting them enough?”

I’d asked myself the same thing when I first saw the article. In fact, I went out and bought a bunch of security cameras before work. It was then that I quietly asked Henry, the only employee I trusted at the time, to install them.

My world was me; mine – meaning Henry, Boris, and Bendy; and a big bad populace of actual demons: humans.

 

“Do you think I’m a demon?” you ask.

Your uncle’s jaw parts. He blinks. “After I told you I want you to be my heir, why would you need to ask? I’ve learned my lesson about trusting people since then.”

“Alice called me a demon. Where’d she get the idea?”

“Do you think you’re a demon?”

You’ve done some bad stuff – stupid stuff, mostly. But everyone has. You like to think you’ve done some good once in a while, showed some kindness, helped someone in need, been there for a friend. But everyone’s done that too. What does that make the human race? What sort of person does that make you?

And so you give the best answer you think your uncle will buy. And you reflect it on him. And you joke around.

He laughs. “Can’t get an actor any more Bendy than you, but any other demons? Would they make a good Toon too?”

“Demons?” You lean back. “Apparently, those were your employees, back in the day. Were you right?”

He shakes his head. “How I thought I was. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but young people do stupid things. Like having their best friend put up a few security cameras instead of hiring professionals to assess a studio’s security needs.”

 

I’d asked Henry to install the cameras because I didn’t trust anyone else. I’d meant to leave him to it, but he grabbed my arm.

“Joey.”

I turned.

Henry’s head was hung. He was pausing. Taking a breath that I could hear. “I’m not sure these are enough. They’re kids, and they don’t understand all the adults who have been wary of them here. You know how many times I’ve seen Boris hiding outside because of something someone said to him?”

“We’ll have to keep the Toons indoors.”

He agreed. He expressed sympathy for the attitudes the Toons had to deal with, even inside the studio though: they were treated as though their lives were not real. He told me he’d comforted a certain demon and a certain wolf dozens of times.

I told him I doubted they’d be treated any better if studio employees saw them the same way they saw anyone else. When I asked him to record a tape about what he knew, he gave me the names of three employees who worried him and a suspicion that there were more.

I didn’t like it. In fact I tried to investigate with just me and Henry, but it didn’t work. When I got back from the holidays, I felt I didn’t have a choice but to demand reports from all my employees to try to identify the biggest threats.

 

Document 7 – A print-out of seven Bible verses: Matthew 13:37-42, and Matthew 19:14.

Directory Entry 5 – Audio Tape 5. Voice of Shawn Flynn. Subject: Toon Safety. January 2.

Directory Entry 6 – Audio Tape 6. Voice of Seamus O’Neil (Head of HR). Subject: Mediation request. January 4.

Directory Entry 7 – Audio Tape 7. Voice of Bendy. Subject: Conflict with Shawn Flynn. January 4.

Directory Entry 8 – Audio Tape 8. Voice of Shawn Flynn. Subject: Conflict with Bendy. January 4.

Directory Entry 9 – Audio Tape 9. Voice of Wally Franks. Subject: Witness Report. January 4.

 

Your uncle directs your attention back to the company photo. He points out a five-foot-tall freckled man with dark hair. “This is Shawn Flynn. He used to work here as a toy maker. He had an… interesting… relationship with Toons, but it never showed in his work. You know what he said?”

As your uncle puts on a painfully fake Irish accent, you get the urge to laugh. Do you suppress it? Do you let it out?

It makes it so much funnier that your uncle is animated as he says, “There be lots of Detooners locally, but very few be going to such lengths as the one in the headlines. Ye should worry most about the thick ones who can’t work out that turning Toons into the most dangerous of beasties, like our demon and our hungry wolf, be the very height of stupidity. I’ve been pointing it out to some, but there be a few migrants from the other coast who be a bit deaf. Can you believe? Not all of em believe in God or angels or demons after all this. And some of em even believe demons are good!”

Putting an ending to what wheezing you do, you take a breath to ask, “Did this Shawn Flynn know the guy who was Detoonin’ over here?”

“Yeah. In fact, he was a bit of a Detooner himself. He had some of the views toward Toons themselves, but he acted like one who just didn’t like the changes that several studios were pushing for in behalf of their Toons – religious demands, new intellectual property laws, and stuff. He never did anything more than go to the Detooning meetings and sign petitions, but as a Detooner, he spent a lot of time around one or both of the most extreme Detooners around here. And still, here in this studio…. You’ll get a fuller picture if I keep telling you about the day we started producing a new line of Bendy dolls. Ones that squeak.”

 

In the higher half of this studio is a workshop devoted to toy making. It is the business here, producing smiles. And what better way to make kids smile than with toys of characters they dreamed could be real back before they were?

Kids. If anything, they were the one group that weren’t at all bothered by the Toons. And thank goodness! It would be a disaster if the more violent Detooners’ views had persisted through the generations rather than stick with the ones whose colleagues are just getting out of jail for their crimes.

Anyway, Bendy was up in the Heavenly Toys workshop. He was in a little room with a conveyor belt, shelves, and the desk where Shawn painted doll faces by hand.

The little demon stood in front of the shelves and picked up one of his replicas. Its soft cotton covered stuffing and a squeaker. Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!

The squeaking got Shawn’s attention. He scooted his chair away from the Toon and reached inside his desk for his Bible.

The scrape of wooden chair on wooden floor got Bendy’s attention. He turned, grinning. But he hesitated when he saw how white Shawn’s face was.

Bendy, he was designed as a demon, so Henry and his other creators gave him attributes like a love of mischief.

But he was also the show’s protagonist. The studio’s biggest star at a time. The reason for the company’s early success. Coming from a family-friendly company, he was also endowed with attributes like friendliness and a love of fun. Not that it would have mattered if he wasn’t, once he’d come to life.

He tucked the toy in his arms and smiled anyway. “Hiya. I’m Bendy. What’s your name?”

Shawn grabbed the Bible and told Bendy exactly what he was thinking: that he shouldn’t talk to him because he’s Christian.

Bendy was young. Bendy was sheltered. Bendy was a demon, so those who protected him didn’t really want him to know what a Christian was. He thought it was Shawn’s name. He jumped up on the table, glanced at a half-painted face, and admired the fully-painted one on the doll he was holding. “Why can’t you talk to me, Christian? You gave my doll here the most beautiful eyes. And that smile that’s a little crooked? It’s like I’m up to no good. I love it! I wanna be friends!”

Shawn batted him off the table with his Bible. “Begone, ye enemy of Jesus!”

A scared new friend was one thing to Bendy. A hostile new “friend,” that was something else. He protested loudly, speech filled with colorful sound effects. Maybe some frogs. Maybe some bike horns. Maybe some wind chimes being smacked against a wall.

Rustling paper can’t have been heard over the Toon, but Shawn must have been flipping through the Bible until he reached the part of Matthew he wanted.

“He that soweth the good seed, is the Son of man. And the field, is the world. And the good seed are the children of the kingdom. And the cockle, are the children of the wicked one. And the enemy that sowed them, is the devil. But the harvest is the end of the world. And the reapers are the angels. Even as the cockle therefore is gathered up, and burnt with fire: so shall it be at the end of the world.”

Bendy had never experienced anything like it before. No wonder he was staring at Shawn, mouth open, question mark floating over his head.

Shawn saw this, but he kept going. “The Son of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all scandals, and them that work iniquity. And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

It was, as he said later, a very un-Christian performance. A personal sin.

At the end of the day, who could blame Bendy for all the wondering he had if _Shawn_ was the one who deserved to be cast into a furnace of fire? His ink was boiling with enough heat that there might as well have been flames in the room already. He snatched the Bible from Shawn’s hands. “Oh yeah? Betcha I can find a page that says nasty things about _humans._ ”

He thumbed through the book, eyes jumping across the words. But he stopped before he found such a verse because he found one that confused him instead, and he read it aloud to Shawn: “But Jesus said to them: Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such…. Joey calls me childish, and Henry always says I’m just a little kid. Which one am I: an enemy to Jesus, or one of the little kids he told you you have to put up with because he’s gonna give us a nice happy-place kingdom?”

Shawn grabbed the doll and the Bible from Bendy’s hands. The Toon’s words would bother him later, but in the moment, he shouted, “He was talking about _human_ children, not demons!”

And boy was he loud: Wally was slacking off nearby that day, but the shout got his attention and he came to see what it was about. He arrived in time to see Shawn shoving Bendy against the shelves, causing an avalanche of dolls.

The little demon was calling for help, and to help Wally came. He dug Bendy out of the pile, gave him a pat on the back, and took him to report the incident to human resources. Unfortunately, the roots of the incident were a little beyond HR’s ability to deal with, so what else where they going to do but make recordings and request that the company head get involved?

 

Uncle Joey tells you there’s a bit more to that incident, but he refers you back to the folder anyway.

 

Document 8 – A clipped magazine article: “Top Ten Sickeningly-Expensive Birthday Presents of Rich.” One entry is highlighted: “Safe-Gag Animation Studios.” It has a picture of a safe with a mouth and pie-eyes, as well as a few paragraphs explaining that it was a gift for twelve-year-old cartoon-lover Arnold Archambault from his parents, Lewis and Dot.

Directory Entry 10 – Audio Tape 10. Voice of Joey Drew. Subject: For Henry’s Ears Only. January 4.

Document 9 – A photocopy of an editorial written by Dot Archambault in defense of Toons. A handwritten-note says that it was submitted to the New Orleans newspaper, the Times-Picayune, over the winter holidays.

 

You’ll have a chance to give all these audio recordings a listen yourself, but the tape’s subject line goes back to how Henry was the only other human being I trusted. That is, I didn’t want word to get out that a rival company was giving Sillyvision a generous offer because I thought it was suspicious and my employees would jump on board.

Because while Bendy and Shawn were making a ruckus, I was down here in this same office, having an argument of my own with a brat who, considering my aspirations, it was hypocritical of me to think of as the worst of the demons: a rich kid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> The Toons are safe enough anyway, right?
> 
> Questions of the week:
> 
> What role do you think studios played in encouraging Detooners? How large do you imagine the movement is internationally?


	3. In Which Henry Gets the Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> As Joey’s upping security, Bendy and Shawn get into a fight.

I apologize for not including the old employee roster in the folder, but it had too much personal information. Names. Addresses. Birth dates. Pay grades. I’d been going over it with a pen and a highlighter, making notes about who posed the most threat to my Toons when I got that phone call.

Glaring at the ringing thing, I wondered for a moment what could be so important for someone to dare interrupt me over. I let it blare for several moments before I finally reached for the handset and wrung its handle like a felon’s neck. “What?”

“Is this Joey Drew?”

I didn’t recognize the squeaky drawl.

“How did you get this number?”

“My name is Arnie. I own Safe-Gag Studios.”

I scribbled a note to myself to fire whoever leaked my direct line to the immature brat. “Well, Arnie, some of us have better things to be doing. Like actually running the studio we’re in charge of. You should know, shouldn’t you?”

There was a soft noise on the other end I couldn’t identify. It sounded like paper or fabric. Something soft. “I’m a big fan of your characters. I’ve got giant dolls of all of them. Ma and Pa and I are tryin’ to help y’all out any way we can.”

I wished I could send him a glare through the line. I probably ended up glaring at a rent raise notice pinned to my bulletin board. “If you want to help, you can stop taking me from work.”

“But I’m offerin’ the Toons some protectin’!”

I rolled my eyes, but I took the chance to stroke my own ego. “You’re calling to ask for advice from an industry giant? Well, let me give you some advice then: keep your Toons indoors, install a security system, and don’t trust anyone else with your precious characters.”

“My family reckons that ain’t enough. What happens when your mischievous, free-spirited Toons wander off?”

  


You hum. “Is that what happened? Did Bendy wander off?”

“Not that time. Not that I was there.” Uncle Joey moves his hand to his lap. “But… perhaps he did. All this time, and we’re still working on the best security for our characters. Do you understand?”

Did you expect things to sound this tough? If you were to inherit the studio, would you be ready for it?

You go quiet.

Pausing, perhaps gauging your lack of answer, your uncle rests his eyes on you. “The Detooner who got Bendy, he’s getting out of jail in two months. Your parents didn’t want you out here for that.” He shakes his head. “You didn’t know. You wanted an education, and that’s a noble goal that helps dreams come true. But if you’re going to be out here, I’ve got to keep you safe.”

Is it alright to inherit a madman’s fortune? Is it worth whatever he might put you through? “Why does that matter to my safety? It ain’t like I’m a Toon.”

Your uncle reaches across the table and rests his hand on your wrist, grip firmer than you expected of someone his age. “Do you think that matters any more to him than it does to Alice?”

Simple solution: don’t make you play Bendy then. You suggest it.

Uncle Joey shakes his head. “It’s too late for you not to be Bendy.”

Raising your eyebrow only gets Uncle Joey to confirm his claim silently. You direct your scowl away from him.

On the wall, the demon’s grin comes across as forced. Fake. “You weren’t there. Did you end up getting anyone to help protect the Toons?”

“Yes, but-”

  


I thought Arnie’s offer that day was a move to get all my Toons in the Detooners’ hands. I hadn’t seen his mother’s editorial, but even if I had, the Archambaults weren’t _mine._ So I scorned the offer when he said he’d fly Bendy and Boris out to New Orleans to live in a guarded home for Toons.

He asked me to reconsider. He showed special concern for Bendy, even told me the same story his mother refers to in her editorial.

  


Your uncle refers you to the editorial. There’s one paragraph in particular that’s circled and marked up:

> Toons are friendly, hospitable, and carry the spirit of our country. Which of you did not go see them in tough times? Did they not cheer you right up? Which of you did not watch them cheer our nation on through the war? No, it ain’t just disturbing that some states would change a unicorn into a rhinosaurus and leave no trace of a cartoon fairy – it is depraved, unprovoked, and wholly un-American.

“That story about the unicorn and the fairy made national news. And why wouldn’t it? We knew nothing about Toons, and it gave us the smallest clue on what they might be. Theories were flying left and right!” Uncle Joey gestures to an entry a few items down the directory. “The story is in that paper if you want to check later, but the point is, we weren’t sure what would happen to Bendy in particular if he got Detooned.”

  


Directory Entry 14 – a newspaper hat.

  


I may not have trusted Arnie, but of course he got under my skin – how could he not when he’d voiced aloud so many concerns I was keeping to myself about the Toons. “So?” I asked. “A rhino? Sounds like Eunice Corness got an upgrade!”

“Are you callin’ me a doofus, Mr. Drew? I can’t see you being any less concerned for your Toons than I am for Scotty Safe.”

Arnie’s annoying and I still don’t like him, but what he said resonated with me as much as anything ever did. Yes, I could understand him being concerned for his Toon. Maybe even his being a little curious about the fate of other studios’ characters, as though he wasn’t fully a demon.

I scoffed anyway. “Joey Drew Studios won’t be sending our characters off to Louisiana to be at your mercy!”

I dropped the phone on the receiver.

Before I did anything else, I got a tape recorder from my desk and made that recording to Henry. I summarized the conversation for him, with a few of its juicier quotes, and started giving him all my thoughts on the matter.

There was a knock at the door, and there was Wally, carrying some tapes and complaining that he got sent to deliver a mediation request he wasn’t directly involved with. He clattered the tapes all down on my desk and got out of there.

As soon as I heard everything I needed to, I went up to the Heavenly Toys Workshop and straightened out Shawn and Bendy. I asked Shawn to tolerate Bendy. I asked Bendy to stay away from Shawn for his own safety.

But when I checked up on them the next day, I found that only one of them had listened: Shawn was hunting for his paintbrushes in the workshop, muttering something about seventy and seven, and Bendy was watching him from behind some shelves, wheezing into his glove.

I got Bendy away from there before there could be any more problems. I chewed him out and left him to think about it over the weekend.

  


Document 10 – a typed copy of “A Statement from the Creator of Bendy” by Henry Stein, handwritten notes in its margins.

Document 11 – a photocopy of a journal entry of Uncle Joey’s. It’s dated January 9 and talks about a phone call he made to Henry. It mentions a little Stein baby and a very upset Bendy from the day before.

  


Your heart sinks. You never knew Stuart Stein yourself, but to see a journal entry describing how happy the family was? It’s almost as bad as seeing the haunted looks on their faces when they first told you. And every time they remembered him since.

Have you ever visited the grave of someone you never met? Is it inappropriate for a stranger? Is it an obligation for family? Is it a basic respect for someone who would have been an adopted brother, had he lived? You just might go.

  


Directory Entry 11 – Audio Tape 11. Voice of Thomas Connor. Subject: Toon Safety. January 2.

Directory Entry 12 – Audio Tape 12. Voice of Thomas Connor. Subject: Complaint. January 8.

  


It was a crazy, stupid dangerous idea to experiment with ink. If ink could make life, what else could it make? Could its properties transfer?

Maybe the Detooners performed similar experiments. I don’t know. Because while I was testing my Ink Machine’s ability to turn plants into Toons, they were pulling their crimes.

  


You blink. “What’s an Ink Machine?”

Your uncle waves a hand. “That’s not important to the story I’m telling right now. It’s still around, so you’ll see it later. All you need to know about it this moment is that its early versions broke a lot, and I had to keep calling a maintenance company called Gent. They usually sent a gruff man named Thomas Connor – you met him of course. He came around so often that I hired him as our full-time maintenance staff.”

Can you picture something with so little description? Do you feel a need to? How do you deal with unsatisfied curiosity?

You sit back, arms crossed, and pout. “I asked what an Ink Machine is.”

“Alright,” your uncle says. “In that case, I’ll tell you just a bit….”

  


The Ink Machine has pipes that snake throughout the studio. They’re those big fat ones on the walls and ceilings. They’re the ones that are sometimes a tripping hazard on the floor.

What would they be filled with but ink?

Back in the day, the ink sometimes put too much pressure on the pipes, and they burst. It happened more than anyone would have liked, and those incidents left permanent black stains on the studio’s older wood walls and floors.

When they burst, Wally had to clean the mess up, and the studio had to call Gent.

January 8 was one of those days. Bendy was trying to be good and stay away from Shawn like I asked. He did so by wandering the halls down here.

It was in these halls – just about the place Alice dumped coffee on you – that Tom was working with the pipes.

Bendy came across him. He saw a new friend and ran up to Tom happily.

Tom glared at him.

With it only being the next week, the incident with Shawn must have been fresh in Bendy’s mind. The little demon stopped and asked if Tom thought he was an enemy to God.

Tom kept quiet, being the Gent employee most used to working in unpleasant situations, and he went back to work.

Bendy asked if he was scared of him.

Tom’s the blunt sort, so he probably told Bendy much the same things he said in his log: “The person who poses the biggest threat to Bendy and Boris is God, who created all things _natural_. These… Toons… are as far from that as you can get. You lose your soul, bit by bit, working around them. Almost as much as you do working on Mr. Drew’s Ink Machine. Sooner or later, the devil’s children will be punished for their evil state. I just hope there’s something left of me to save by then.”

Whatever Tom said, Bendy got quick revenge: he rerouted the ink flow to shower the man. It painted the floor, hugged Tom’s shoulders, and gave him the thickest black wig the baldie’s ever had.

Bendy ran off before the mechanic could do a thing. He zipped through the halls, took the elevator up to the art department, and catapulted himself into Henry’s arms.

Henry always was the best at getting Bendy calm. A good rub of the horns. A soothing voice. A distraction until the Toon was ready to talk about whatever it was.

Henry had been falling behind on work and watching the phone all week, but he still put things aside to help Bendy. That day’s distraction came from the old newspapers on Henry’s desk: he was working on that statement at the time, and he needed the editorials so he could respond to the public. He took out pages he didn’t need and taught Bendy something his own father taught him: how to make a hat out of newspapers.

They folded big floppy hats with three corners. When Henry finished his, he centered it between Bendyy’s horns. When Bendy finished his, he put it on Henry’s face.

Henry laughed.

Bendy made another hat. Smaller this time. He handed it to Henry and told him it was for the baby when it was born.

The hat didn’t have to wait long: Bendy was just done telling Henry the gist of what Tom said when the phone call came. Henry grabbed his personal belongings and rushed out in such a hurry that he later had to call HR about his time sheet.

But though Bendy let him go without a fuss, he wasn’t ready to leave Henry’s desk. It was his favorite sanctuary when he was upset.

He kept folding hats until he ran out of newspaper, pausing only to avoid one very worried studio owner. Even then, he was back at the desk when things were clear.

When he was out of newspaper, he decided to read the draft version of Henry’s statement. What he read upset him more than Tom ever could.

  


Your uncle encourages you to read the final product of the statement:

> We at Joey Drew Studios work hard, but it was never our goal to have our characters literally come to life. Most of us desire nothing more than to provide for our families and put smiles on folks everywhere.
> 
> None of us can explain why Bendy and Boris are running around the real world. Some say it’s an act of God. Others say it’s the work of the devil, and judgment will come upon us soon.
> 
> Who can say which view is right?
> 
> Whichever is, we are keeping our Toons away from the public until the proper protections are put in place. Whether that be for us or for them.
> 
> Even if their existence is the work of the devil, we’re doing our part to limit evil’s effects. For now, we strongly recommend that folks leave the wolf and the demon alone.

You express the sympathies you have for the Toons and every thought you had about what the demon should have done.

Uncle Joey smiles. “Getting into character?”

“Character shmaracter! Me, myself – _I’d_ be angry if he wrote something like this about me!” You turn the note for an easier read of the margins. “Why write _artists_ here?”

“I was trying to make sense of the Detooners. This was the closest relevant paper I had while I was on the phone with a certain one.” Uncle Joey taps the paper. “You see, this cleared publicity by answering the public perspective of Toons – especially the Detooner stance – so it was on record for me to review at my desk when everything went south. I was looking for answers that week when the two involved with this coast’s detoonings were out on bail, awaiting trial.”

He pauses. “Anyway, I wish I could have seen the draft, but it’s clear from the final product how it upset Bendy enough to go demand some answers of his own.”

  


Document 12 – Shawn Flynn’s resignation. January 25.

Document 13 – a photocopy of a checkbook register with most of its information blacked out. What remains is a deposit for a doll from Shawn Flynn. January 8. A handwritten note on the page says the register is Joey Drew’s.

Directory Entry 14– Audio Tape 13. Voice of: Bendy. Subject: Shawn Flynn. February 13.

Directory Entry 15 – a doll. (To be present at the interview.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question of the week:
> 
> What would you hate most for someone to say about you?
> 
> Next time:
> 
> See the documents.


	4. In Which Joey Builds a Wall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Joey gets a phone call, and Bendy has a conflict with Tom similar to what he had with Shawn.

Darting through the halls got Bendy a lot of attention, but he didn’t stop until he reached Shawn Flynn’s desk. Hardly ever one to do what he’s told, that’s the little devil for you. But not only did he hang around Shawn Flynn’s desk, he jumped onto the man’s lap to dig through his desk drawers.

If he was particularly Toonish that day, he tossed out a lot of random stuff – bright yellow ducks, tinkling bells, smelly banana peels, or whatever. It’s strange. It’s odd. It’s hilarious, but what he was looking for was the toy maker’s thick, well-read Bible.

Shawn had to ask him what he was looking for too. His eyes were wide, and he looked as if he’d just been slapped. Who’d have thought Bendy was capable of causing that sort of surprise without trying to prank the man?

Under other circumstances, Bendy would have laughed the moment he glanced up and saw Shawn’s expression. As it were, he stuck his glove in the back of the drawer, and wrapped his hand around the Bible. “I’m lookin’ for this.”

Bendy plopped the book on his own model sheet, letting its pages fall open. “Hey, fire-or-happy-place-book! I need some answers this time. Don’cha dare confuse me again!”

Bendy may have been confused about the Bible, but his behavior was baffling to Shawn. A demon? Consulting his scriptures? His mind clouded up, and the only thing he could think of to do was correct Bendy on the book’s name.

The demon blinked up at him and pointed one fat finger to the pages. “I think your Bible’s broken. I asked it for an answer, but it’s just talkin’ about borin’ people getting bored of each other.”

He’d stumbled across one of the Bible’s many lineage passages.

Shawn blinked back at him and said he hadn’t heard Bendy ask a question.

Above the demon’s head, a light bulb sprung into existence. It promptly lit. “Hey, Bible: whose creation am I? God’s? Or the devil’s?”

He reached for the Bible, but Shawn closed it on him.

Shawn set Bendy on the floor and apologized for that first day they met each other. He and Bendy had a talk that he wrote about in his personal journal that night.

Although Shawn was tempted to believe that the Toons were the devil’s creations, his pastor had some different ideas. In fact, he frequently reminded his flock that God made all things. The Toons are no different.

With all the fear and rumors flying around, it was good to have some allies. Even after everything. And was the pastor a good ally – even converting Detooners like Shawn!

Shawn decided to give Bendy a chance because of that. He already had, even before Bendy came for the Bible, but it was that conversation with Bendy that had him really start to believe his pastor.

Now Shawn kept a lot of that conversation to himself, but there were things Bendy remembered. A smile or two. Warm hands pinching his cheeks. A bit of Shawn’s life story:

“We humans was created too. That’s who God is. It’s why I went and made meself a toy maker. I get to be just a wee bit like my Creator in doin’ so.”

The two may have started on the wrong foot, but thanks to that conversation, they became friends. Good enough that Shawn’s resignation left an apology for Bendy, for not being there when he got back from Louisiana. Good enough that when Bendy found out that Shawn didn’t work at Sillyvision anymore, he assumed the man was fired and begged for his job back. Good enough that Shawn’s desk became Bendy’s favorite hiding place while Henry was spending time with his newborn baby.

  


Uncle Joey hands you a black plush Bendy doll. It has a carefully-painted face, and on its chest, it has a heart sewn onto it with yellow thread. “This is yours. Keep it.”

You take the doll, and the fabric is soft under your hands. The stuffing is thick enough that the doll would make a good pillow if it was longer than your forearm. Squeak!

It’s free merch, but what do you think of the gift? What toys did you play with when you were a kid? Do you still play with them? Do you find the doll cute? Do you find it creepy? Does it remind you of that ghost story your best friend swore really happened to him? The one where his sister brought home a new “baby.”

Tracing the stitching on the chest, you ask, “What’s with this? Is it part of Bendy’s character design? A demon with a heart? Is that what he was supposed to be?”

“He did have one, but it wasn’t part of his design.” Uncle Joey flicks his finger toward the doll. “Shawn Flynn bought that one so he could make something special for Bendy. It was part of his apology. He added that last touch right in front of him, claiming that the real Bendy had a heart of gold.”

It was Bendy’s? Can you accept something like this? You keep an eye on your uncle’s face. “Why are you givin’ it to me?”

His lips turn up. “Bendy loved that thing. Used to pour his soul out to it. It’s got to go to the person who will treasure it most.”

And by that, your uncle means a freshman who hasn’t even agreed to be Bendy’s actor? Do you try to give it back? Or is there a reason you don’t?

You don’t think your uncle is going to give much else away, so you let the doll lie on the table between the two of you. Do you walk out now?

No. Your father wanted you to hear from Uncle Joey. Can you trust him? Either your father or your uncle? You’ve at least got to find out what this is all about.

But if you don’t like what you hear? Who is it you trust most in life? Who could you go to for help if you really need it? If not your family, then who? You’re over a thousand miles from home, and you know no one.

If there’s one thing Shawn Flynn captured best in the doll’s face, it’s that Bendy’s up to no good.

  


Document 14 – a note made with letters glued to the page. The font and paper type tells you it was made from newspapers.

Document 15 – a sales report that highlights the financial loss on Bendy bacon soup.

Document 16 – a map of Level K with notes and markings.

Document 17 – a picture of a wooden cabinet. It has a slit in the door and is labeled _LITTLE MIRACLE STATION._

Directory Entry 16 – Audio Tape 14. Voice of Wally Franks. Subject: Equipment request. January 8.

Directory Entry 17 – a Little Miracle Station.

  


Tom wasn’t in on Shawn and Bendy’s heart-to-heart. No, instead he was tracking Wally down and getting into an argument with him about the demon.

It was Wally’s job to clean up the ink of course, but that lazy young janitor claimed that Tom was picking on him for standing up for Bendy. Still, he needed to keep his paycheck – which of my employees didn’t, during the Depression? – so he took his mop and went to clean.

He went through all his mop heads that day. That’s what happens when there are multiple giant ink spills in one day. Or giant ink pranks as the case may be.

  


Your uncle chuckles. “I would have liked to see that personally – not just the after-effects. I appreciate Bendy's pranks a lot more now.”

His face falls. “But in all that time, _I_ was having a rough day. I mean, just read that!” He gestures to the note made from the newspaper clippings.

_Joey Drew,_

_Can even a Detooner like me do some good in your eyes? I thought I should warn you about one of our own. He talks to the Detooners in your studio and asks them the best way to get at Bendy and Boris._

_He’s a good friend, but he doesn’t always think things through. What sort of an idea is it to take a fake wolf and a fake demon and make them real?_

_Just a warning to be careful with your characters._

_A troubled soul._

Your uncle taps the company photo. He points to a man in a sharp suit who had once-buzzed hair, a scraggly beard, and bags under his eyes. “This is Grant Cohen, our accountant. He was after me for not planning a security system into our budget before I bought it. He was after me for not purchasing a security system sooner. He was also after me for the first security systems I installed being so lousy.”

  


I didn’t know how the cut-and-paste note got into my office, but I found it atop Grant’s financial report. I hunched over some papers, plotting ways to keep my Toons safe and taking it more seriously than I took Wally when he came in, threatening to quit again.

He was complaining that Tom sought him out to clean up an inky mess and only gave him more work when he stood up for Bendy.

I shooed him out of my office, saying that he should record any complaints – I was busy. I imagined he’d just go hide from the problem somewhere anyway. He was always hiding, trying to avoid the parts of his job he didn’t like: any of it.

And once he was out of my office – _then_ it hit me: the only thing I could come up with for the Toons was to get them better places to hide. And I’d thought of a way to do that – those little boxes were meant to keep them safe. Just scatter them all over and pretend they were to store all those extra cans of soup we couldn’t sell.

I knew of a model of cabinet meant to store large radios – so just a box, no shelves. They just needed someone to take an ax to them to give the Toons a peep hole. And eventually, a bit of polishing up so they looked a bit nicer.

The cabinets weren’t my best idea, I admit.

Anyway, I knew it would take a few days before we could obtain the cabinets, and the Toons needed a safe place to hide in the meantime. And Wally, since he was always hiding, he’d know all the best hiding places. I could make him tell me.

So I took to the halls, searching the place myself. I kept scowling at cobwebs in forgotten ends of our labyrinth halls, calculating the dock to Wally’s pay. Eventually, I found him on Level K.

  


Your uncle points at the map. There is toy storage on either side of the Heavenly Toys Workshop, and down the hall from one is an area labeled as _the safe house (now female dorms for the Toons)._

  


At the time, the area was nothing more than a distant bathroom with a vacant office. There’s a nook there where the Toons would proudly display stolen sketches and crayon creations, but it just had dust and a snoring janitor when I got there.

I nudged Wally awake with my foot.

He yelped. “Oh, come on – this was my best hiding place! No one ever comes back here.”

I told him he’d better get back to work, clean some areas he hadn’t in a while.

Grumbling, he went off.

And me? Well, I doubt I was as sneaky as I thought at a time, but I went and got some hammers and nails, and I built a new wall back in the area. I left a crawl-hole that only a Toon or a child could squeeze through.

The boards were crooked, the wall took way too much wood, but I couldn’t have been prouder of myself. I stood there and admired every splinter waiting to stick itself in an unwary intruder. Or employee. I wouldn’t have welcomed either one back there. I must have been there a good five minutes before I got the Toons and told them to stay in that new hiding spot.

  


Document 18 – a torn-out, crumpled-up title page from _Demons and the Universal Order._ Giant letters scrawl the words _GOD DOESN’T HATE ME_ across it. You can’t place the handwriting, but you swear it’s familiar.

Document 19 – a newspaper editorial titled “A NOTE FROM JOEY DREW.”

Document 20 – Alice Angel’s concept art.

Directory Entry 18 – Audio Tape 15. Voice of Joey Drew. Subject: PR. January 12.

Directory Entry 19 – Audio Tape 16. Voice of Seamus O’Neil. Subject: The Music Department. January 16.

Directory Entry 20 – Audio Tape 17. Voice of Sammy Lawrence. Subject: Bendy. January 16.

Directory Entry 21 – Audio Tape 18. Voice of Boris, Joey Drew, and Henry Stein. Subject: Bendy. January 16.

  


The Toons wandered from the safe house more than most would have liked the next several days – especially Bendy. When Henry got back to work that Thursday, the little Toon was always going to ask him when he would get to meet him and for stories about the new baby.

Henry always gave Bendy the same answer: “When he’s older.” But he was happy to oblige with tales of Stuart’s smiles and giggles. He had a glow to his skin, a sparkle in his eyes, and a bounce in his soul that discouraged anyone from interrupting him, even for work.

The most work anyone asked from him was to write another defense of the Toons – the first one hadn’t changed enough minds.

Henry worked on it right away when he got the assignment Friday afternoon, but he got it near the end of the work day, so he left it at his desk over the weekend. When he came in Monday morning, he got back to work on it, but he was interrupted by a tragic phone call about Stuart. The little fellow passed away for no apparent reason during his nap.

Henry’s reddened eyes had become empty by the time he asked for the rest of the day off, and he handed in an incomplete argument for the Toons.

He said he would be back to work the next day – he did have an unexpected funeral to pay for – but he needed the rest of the day off to be with Linda. And he got it.

The man had the rest of the art department feeling sorry for him, but no one told Bendy where he was when he came looking for another story about Stuart. Who wants to be the bearer of bad news?

Bendy was left to search the studio for his creator, and he ran into our music director, Sammy Lawrence, in the halls. It was just after five, and Sammy had a book tucked under his arm. He crouched to Bendy’s level and said, “I’ve been looking for you, little devil.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question of the week:
> 
> What does Sammy want?
> 
> Next time:
> 
> “I had to. It’s Bendy. He’s actin’ all weird.”


	5. In Which You Meet a Pirate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Shawn and Bendy become friends after Shawn answers some life questions for the demon and even gives him a present as an apology. Meanwhile, Joey deals with Tom and Wally and builds a safe house for the Toons. Henry’s baby dies and Sammy also has a present for Bendy.
> 
> In the present, your uncle gives you Bendy’s doll and you’re not sure you’re okay with it.

Uncle Joey points Sammy out in the company photo. The picture is black-and-white, but the shade of gray in Sammy’s suit doesn’t match the grays of the time – the colors maybe. Sammy’s clothes are neat, and his hair is slicked back. He’s sticking his chin up and sending the camera a scowl.

  


Sammy gave Bendy that book and promised him it was his way to greatness. Bendy was all bright eyes and toothy grin at first, but when he actually read it, it made several claims about demons that he didn’t like.

And so the little demon came up with a plan. One a little more involved than his usual spur-off-the-moment pranks. Further reaching, but admittedly not something that impacted production beyond Sammy’s anger and the band’s amusement. He stole some scissors and some art paper from Henry’s desk and waited to see what the band was rehearsing the next day.

So Tuesday morning, he hid himself in the Music Department. There’s an orchestra pit there with a short stage in front of a projector screen, where the musicians sit in wooden chairs. Above it is a small room with a desk and a projector – one of Norman’s projection booths.

Bendy hid himself up there and listened to Sammy introducing an episode. The department was recording the music from “Construction Corruption,” and Sammy lectured the band on what he thought of President Roosevelt’s New Deal while arranging the short’s bouncy clang-y score.

Sammy’s contract made it clear that the pieces he arranged for our shorts were _his_ and the studio had license to play them only for the Bendy episodes, so all the damage Bendy did to the music stayed in Sammy’s hands. He always blamed Bendy for that.

Anyway, as soon as Bendy lost interest in what Sammy was saying about politics, he counted heads in the orchestra pit, cut out a large paper cross for each person – just like the one on the front of Shawn’s bible – and left the excess paper to lie in pieces across the floor. He hung around until Sammy announced that they’d rehearse the episode’s score one last time from the top before they broke for lunch. Then he left the crosses behind, crept out of the projection booth, and bolted to the Art Department.

When he reached Henry’s desk, Henry was there, staring at a section of story board on his desk. Bendy reached for the desk’s single side drawer. “I’m returnin’ your scissors. Sorry I took them. Can I have your glue?” he asked.

But Henry just rested his head in his arms.

Toon logic, being Toon logic, Bendy must have taken that as not a no. He set the scissors in the desk and hunted for the glue.

It wasn’t in the drawer. Henry hadn’t cleaned his desk from his last few projects, so it was still on an overhead shelf, next to a newspaper with scathing opinions about Toons in its editorials and an article about the newly-detooned Pride the Lion on its front.

He ran off to play his prank on Sammy.

When Sammy and the rest of the Music Department came back from lunch, they found a paper cross glued to the front page of each of their music. Sammy’s copy had his blocking his name on the score’s title page. Many of the crosses had rough sketches of Bendy sticking his tongue out, blowing raspberries, or putting a foot on Sammy’s back. Others had childish insults instead, like _stink head_ and _poopy breath._

They heard giggling behind the piano in the corner, and when they investigated, there was Bendy.

Bendy ran off before Sammy or the band could do so much as scold him. For a while, no one could find him, but two hours later, he went back to Henry’s desk to return the glue.

When Bendy got there, he found Henry at his desk, still lying his head in his arms. He glanced at him as he put the glue in Henry’s drawer, and when Henry still didn’t react to the noise, he put one of his cold inky hands on the animator’s shoulder. He asked him what was wrong, but Henry said nothing.

There was a look that Henry wore on his face all that week. Hair unkempt. Chin and jaw covered in stubble. Clothes wrinkled and a little smelly. And those eyes. Even when they weren’t red, they were staring beyond the present – back to the past, when Stuart was still with him.

The rest of the Art Department kept asking why he didn’t just take more paid time off, being best friends with the boss and all, but Henry needed something to distract him from his grief. It’s too bad his job couldn’t do that for him.

When Bendy was there at the desk that moment when he realized what a mess his creator was, the rest of the Art Department made an effort to give the two some privacy by not watching what he did next – but it must have been a challenge.

Bendy hopped over to a filing cabinet full of scraps and called for Henry’s attention. He leaped in the air, planted one foot on the cabinet’s corner, and knocked the thing over on himself with a _thump!_ The scraps flew from the drawers, floated down, and covered the demon, who had spiral eyes and birds flying around his head.

He looked at Henry, but Henry had a shadow over his eyes.

Leaving the mess on the floor, he raced to a shelf instead and grabbed a plastic modeling doll. He held it under Henry’s nose and made it dance. “I know what will cheer ya up – a toy for Stuart! I know of plenty handsome demons downstairs in need of a good home!”

Bendy wasn’t prepared for the sniffles and the tears that brought. He stared at Henry wiping his eyes on an unusually ink-free sleeve.

“No, don’t cry! _This_ will cheer ya up for sure!” Bendy ran around the room, grabbing rulers from all the animator’s desks. He juggled. Two. Three. Five. He sent a smile Henry’s way, but Henry had his eyes shut.

Plop! Plop! Snap!

Bendy ignored the rulers in favor of a new idea. He swaggered to Henry’s side and put an arm around him. “Say, Henry, why did your ink brush see a doctor? Because it had a stroke!”

Henry couldn’t even crack a smile for Bendy.

At this point, Bendy frowned. “Whose shoes do I get ta glue to the ceiling for you?”

He glared around at the rest of the Art Department.

The rest of the Art Department quickly buried themselves in their work, in case Bendy blamed them for upsetting Henry.

Henry swallowed the lump in his throat and scolded Bendy for leaving the Toon house.

Bendy stood there gaping for several minutes. He’d never gotten in trouble with Henry before, and he’d never heard Henry use such a tone before either. As Henry kept scolding him, his voice replaced its waver for steel and its whisper for a shout.

The little demon asked Henry if he didn’t love him anymore.

Henry knew he wasn’t in the best of moods, and he explained it to Bendy. Because the other animators were so reluctant to tell him, it was from the mourning father himself that he heard of Stuart Stein’s death. Even though he was upset, he took Bendy into his arms and held him.

He asked why Bendy was into his art supplies, but Bendy lied. And just what did Bendy say about the rest of the studio? He said no one had ever as much as upset him, and he promised to stop taking things so personally from then on. After all, he still didn’t know how humans thought.

Bendy went on to prove that last point: after talking to Shawn, he knew that God is his creator’s creator, and with the example Henry set for him, it never crossed Bendy’s mind to doubt that God cares as much for his creations as Henry cared for him and Boris. So he asked why God would take Henry’s baby from him.

The things that came from Henry’s mouth caught him off guard. Doubt that God exists? Doubt that God loves his creations no matter what? He’d never seen anything like Henry’s spiritual crisis.

Henry was just glad he could stop himself before he could say what he’d most regret saying to Bendy – he doubted that God would forgive him for making and loving a Toon imagined as a playful little demon. He managed instead to wrap his arms around Bendy, look him in the eyes, and say, “I love you. I want to be sure you know that.”

He watched as Bendy’s mouth flattened and the demon scratched the back of his head, only looking up when a tiny light bulb floated over Bendy’s head and switched on. “Even though I reminded you about Stuart?”

“Yes, buddy.”

“Even though I took your stuff without asking to play a prank on Sammy?”

“I’m not the one to apologize to for that.”

The one he was talking about was stories below, locked away in that weird sanctuary of his – a shelved hallway that leads to a single toilet and a desk with his favorite deerskin banjo stood beside it. He was busy ranting into a tape about Bendy, starting to the stack that painted Bendy as the only guilty party in the relationship between him and Sammy.

Bendy didn’t care about that relationship as much as he cared about his relationship with Henry anyway. He always tried his best to make his creator happy, and though he didn’t understand humans, he guessed pretty well what Henry was going to say earlier. He slid off Henry’s lap, cleaned up the scrap cabinet except for one piece of concept art, and brought the remaining paper over to Henry’s desk.

On it was a sketch of a female character with a halo, a beauty mark, and flowing black locks – yes, Alice Angel. He handed it to his creator and said, “I wouldn’t mind a rival running around.”

Henry sent him back to the safe house and went to talk his best friend about him.

  


Document 21 – a drawing in your dad’s style of Bendy, Boris, and Alice walking down a flower-lined road. He wrote a hand-written note in the corner: _Bendy, may your happiness last forever._

Directory Entry 22 – Audio Tape 19. Voice of Henry. Subject: Bendy. January 16.

  


You barely get time to wonder why Alice was so hostile to Bendy’s potential actor if Henry meant her to be a friend to the little devil when Uncle Joey’s office door slams open. “Captain!”

Your uncle turns toward the door. “How many times do I have to tell you? It’s just Joey!”

The rough feminine voice isn’t one you’ve heard in person, but thanks to TV, you’d recognize it anywhere: Cat. Sure enough, framed by the door is a tall pink Toon with a glint of gold at her ear. Grinning, you greet your long-time pen pal.

She grins the moment she looks your way. “Good to see yer! I’ll talk with yer later, mate, but fer now I’ve got to question Captain Drew here about why Alice is bein’ intolerably weepful in the dorms.”

From her hammer space, she whips out a silver sword, plants it in Uncle Joey’s office floorboards, and leans on it. “Why did yer let Tom chew her out so? I told yer she don’t understand why me mate’s here or why ye took all the attention ye give her and gave it to him instead. Charley told her ye’d love her again if she did somethin’ about her rival to yer affections.”

Your uncle pulls spare paper from a drawer and starts drawing something on it. “I sat her down and told her what happened the night Bendy got detooned. We can’t just pretend he’s dead and leave him behind!”

What makes Uncle Joey so sure that Bendy isn’t dead? Everyone knows what happened the night Bendy was detooned, up until the moment that the priest sent to exorcise him keeps silent on. Should you be worried about this?

“ARGH! But did ye tell her the whole story? I told yer ye shouldn’t tell her any later than the time ye tell him.”

Uncle Joey sets down his pen. “Did you come down here just to tell me _I told you so_? I expect better from my Toons.”

The moment he’s done speaking, your uncle holds up the paper he drew on and shows it to Cat. She yowls and runs off.

Do you laugh? It’s what Toons are for, isn’t it? Or do you care about your friend more than that? Then again, it’s not like she got hurt. “What did you show her?”

Uncle Joey turns the paper toward you. Drawn on it, is a long, bumpy cartoon cucumber. “Best way to keep her from being insufferable when she’s right. You don’t mind waiting here for a bit, do you?”

He’s wheeling out regardless. But do you sit there silently? Do you call something after him? And if so, what do you say? Do you bear a grudge against the Toon for dumping coffee on you? Do you feel sorry for her losing her father figure’s attention? Knowing Toons are like children and all.

At the doorway, your uncle smiles at you. “It takes a lot of patience to rule a cartoon empire.”

If you want this company, you’ll have to sit in this hard seat and wait. Dolls? Demons? The fact that this sounds a lot like your dad’s crazy stories about Bendy that you used to laugh at when you were younger? What do you do?

“Is the captain gone?” Cat Earrin’ is peeking around the door.

“Cat!” You get out of your seat and go greet your friend. “Good to finally meetcha!”

What do you talk about when you’ve met a person you’ve heard so much about? That you’ve seen on TV? Whose name everyone knows? It’s not like you and Cat haven’t written to each other frequently, but have you ever noticed how much differently people can act in person?

Cat pops two dolls out of her hammer space – an Alice Angel doll and an old doll of Boris the Wolf. “Thought ye might want the full set of Mr. Stein’s creations. Ain’t they yer family and all that?”

You take the two. “They’re not possessed, are they?”

“No. Why would I be givin’ yer possessed dolls?”

The Toon’s your friend, right? Maybe you can get the truth out of her. “Should I be worried about what Uncle Joey’s tellin’ me? He’s always backed up my dad’s crazy stories, but now he’s got evidence, and Bendy… well he _is_ a demon. Is he tellin’ me the truth?”

“Aye.”

Should you hide your nerves from Cat? Do you have trembling hands to calm? Goosebumps to hide? A squeak in your voice to swallow? You take a breath. “Is Bendy still around?”

“Of course he is! He’s here.”

You can’t help your reaction this time, and your embarrassment is only compounded by the fact that a Toon who’s scared of a cucumber is less frightened by the demon than you are.

Cat sits you down. “He hasn’t told yer yet, has he?”

“Told me what?”

You watch Cat’s face for any tells – should be easy on a Toon. But her face isn’t the one you expect – she frowns, and a thought bubble gurgles up from her head, holding inside a grinning black-and-white demon offering her his hand.

That’s right – she’s Bendy’s friend too, isn’t she? If she had to choose between you and him, who would she be more loyal to?

“Ye’ve got to hear Bendy’s story. Ye shouldn’t have come back here, ‘cause now yer life depends on it.” Cat takes a step back. “I wish I could answer yer question, but ye ought to hear it from a creator’s mouth.”

She leaves you without a chance to ask her any more questions.

Do you run? Do you look through the documents while your uncle’s gone? You don’t get much chance to, because he comes in, Alice in tow, and makes her apologize to you. She stays just long enough to do so.

The moment she leaves, Uncle Joey looks at the papers you’re on, asking himself where he left off. His eyes land on Henry’s picture. “That’s right. I was going to tell you that he came to talk to me right after that.”

  


There are many reasons I considered Henry mine back then – I’d been friends with him since we were young, he was my first business partner, and he was one of the few people I could believe cared about me. The main reason being that I trusted him to tell me everything.

He came downstairs with Alice’s concept art and told me everything that just happened between him and Bendy. He came to tell me that he was reconsidering how much we tell the Toons, because he was unaware of how much Bendy picked up on from the studio employees. He caught me up, and he was about to tell me something else too when Boris plodded into my office, ears down, hands trembling and a crumpled piece of paper in his gloves. “Mr. Drew?”

It wasn’t quite his guilty look – sure his ears were down, but when he was guilty, he twiddled his thumbs behind his back. I had to assume something frightened him. “What did I tell you about leaving the safe house?”

“I had to. It’s Bendy. He’s actin’ all weird.”

I made a plan in an instant – get the basics out of Boris, then send Henry to check on Bendy while I stayed and kept Boris safe. “Weird how?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question of the week:
> 
> What are you in danger of?
> 
> Next time:
> 
> Make a wish, Bendy.


	6. In Which there are Little Miracles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> After playing a prank on Sammy, Bendy learns that Henry’s baby has died. Later, Boris tells Joey that Bendy is acting weird.
> 
> In the present, Cat warns you that what Joey’s telling you about Bendy is true.

Weird how? Your uncle asked a good question, all those years ago. You narrow your eyes. “Uncle Joey, why am I here?”

He reaches across the desk and puts a warm hand on yours. “Because you chose to move out here. As much as I’d rather not have you anywhere near Bill Bell when he gets out of prison, it was your choice. They said you’d be a comfort, and I guess it’s my turn. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather leave the studio to. I just wish I knew you’d be safe.”

He’s not making much sense. “They?”

“They.”

He’s doing it on purpose, isn’t he? Or so you think for a moment.

“The angels who got you from your birth mother and gave you to Henry.”

Did the case workers know about Stuart? How is that relevant?

Your right hand is free, and you drum its fingers against the desk. “What am I doing in your office? Why do you want me to be Bendy?”

“Because it’s your right!” Your uncle peers at you. “What did Cat tell you?”

“Enough.” You meet his eyes with a scowl.

“I don’t think you’ve got it quite right. You think I want you to replace my Toon, don’t you? No one could do that. I just want to bring your character back to the show.”

There he is again, assuming you’re taking this job. How deeply does it irritate you? Does it make you want to walk out right then? Or are you a little flattered he has such confidence in you as an actor, albeit wearing a stupid kiddie villain costume? Regardless, didn’t Cat say something about your life being on the line?

You eye the Bendy plush. Is he in there?

You push down any fears you have and say, “Just get to the point about Bendy already.”

He shakes his head. “You’re going to want the whole story by the time we’re through. I will get back to telling you what Boris was saying about Bendy acting weird.”

  


Both in the cartoons and in real life, Boris was always hungry. He chowed down on just about everything – old pizza, green oranges, and even food labeled as being someone else’s. The studio gave him a dozen cans of the failing soup a day to keep him happy, and another dozen were thrown in for Bendy – it was the demon’s favorite food, after all.

By the time the safe house was finalized, it had an oven and a table with dishes for the Toons. Boris spent most of his time sitting on his side of the round table – the side where he stored his clarinet and his banjo.

But when he saw Bendy come in with his eyes on the floor and his smile flipped upside down, he made what for him was a huge sacrifice – he dished up a bowl of soup and slid it toward Bendy.

Bendy offered him a weak smile, but the soup didn’t fully cheer him up. He ignored it for a moment to grab Sammy’s book from his side of the table, open to the title page, tear it out, scribble on it, and throw the entire book in the trash. He sent a large, wet glob of spit at it for good measure, staining the back cover.

He sat across from Boris and stared at the steaming soup.

Boris left his spoon in his bowl for a moment. “What’s wrong? You don’t look too good.”

Bendy complained about what Henry didn't quite say. He claimed he could handle normal folk thinking God hates him, but his own creator? He told Boris everything.

Boris didn’t know even as well as Bendy who God is at the time. “Well, have you tried askin’ this Mr. God what he thinks of you? That should clear things up real quick.”

Bendy jumped up, grin back on his face. “Good idea!”

He ran through the hallway, back to the bedroom, where Boris knew perfectly well there was no phone and no stationery. The wolf even left the table to make sure his friend was alright!

When he got there, Bendy was standing still. He had a question mark floating above his head.

Of course, that was because Bendy had no idea how to actually talk to God. He’d never done so before, but he’d heard about doing so from Shawn, so he got the doll he got from Shawn and asked it to help him get a message to God. He started speaking loudly enough for Boris to hear, “Henry might not believe in ya right now, but I believe in ya!”

Boris thought his friend had started talking to inanimate objects and believing they could actually hear him. He called Bendy’s name, but the demon didn’t respond.

Bendy hadn’t even heard. He was too busy telling God what he thought of God and what he thought God thought of humans.

He wished to be one, but he wasn’t sure asking God would do anything for him. He hadn’t heard that God’s omnipotent. He wasn’t sure if he was one of God’s creations. He wasn’t even sure he wasn’t one of God’s enemies. But he did think God would do something to help Henry if he asked nicely enough for Henry’s baby back. After all, he knew God loved Henry like Henry loved him and Boris.

Gotta love Toon logic. The only logic on Earth where bringing the dead back to life can be both run-of-the-mill and utterly, lunatically impossible. Both if you asked Bendy and if you asked Boris.

Boris didn’t know what to do. To him, it looked like Bendy was expecting an imaginary friend to do the impossible, and he wasn’t exactly a psychologist. He got the title page out of the trash to show me and Henry and went to my office.

He left the safe house around the time Bendy was stopping to listen for an answer.

Toons. So optimistic! Such dreamers! Isn’t it beautiful?

Maybe he was wondering if God would send him a letter or make a Bible start shouting at him. Or maybe he took not being struck down as a sign that he was allowed to talk to God. Whatever he was thinking, he ended up telling Shawn later that he felt better for getting things off his chest and that he could do it again if no one was watching.

  


You stare at your uncle. “You mean to tell me that Boris saw a cartoon demon praying?”

“Yep.”

Do you burst into laughter? Do you comment about how it turned out for him?

Your uncle’s eyes sparkle. “Would you believe he was baptized later?”

“What?”

“Not that he was in a position to make his own decisions at the time, but Henry made sure of it.”

You take a breath. “What is a baptized demon like?”

“I don’t think he liked the water much. He was crying the whole time. You’d think someone was playing a siren.”

It’s like your uncle was there, but you know he’s not particularly religious himself. But what if he’s talking about the night of Bendy’s disappearance? Couldn’t exorcism in some ways be considered a forcible baptism? Or if the particular preacher Uncle Joey mentioned earlier was involved, maybe it was an attempt to save the Toon? “Was it really that Bendy was that religious?”

“Looks like it. Henry and I told Boris who God is, and we told him all about the Detooners while we had him there. I let him stay in my office to ask me questions while I sent Henry up to check on Bendy. Make sure he knew what he was doing and warn him about the Detooners. That sort of thing.”

  


When Henry reached the safe house, he was greeted with a giant hug from Bendy.

The Toon grinned at him. “Did you get Stuart back?”

Henry held him to his chest. “We need to talk.”

They talked, but Toons can be stubborn, and once they get any sort of idea into their heads, it’s hard to talk them out of it. In the end, Henry gave up and let Bendy hang on to his belief. “You want to be happy? Here. Remember that your friends care for you.”

He got some paper and drew Bendy that picture with him, Alice, and Boris.

Bendy’s grin widened as he looked at it. “You’re planning on bringing Alice to life?”

“Joey and I are talking about it,” Henry said, but he didn’t actually want to create any more living Toons. He was struggling enough with a hurting demon and a hurting wolf.

  


Document 22 – a sacrilegious script in which angels are treated as slaves to be commanded.

Document 23 – a note with a church’s address and a Father Black’s phone number.

Directory Entry 23 – Audio Tape 20. Voice of Joey Drew and Shawn Flynn. Subject: Bendy. January 17.

  


When Henry returned to my office, I was still there with Boris. He interrupted to tell us that yes, Bendy understood, and he was serious about that prayer too. He wrapped an arm around Boris. “Bendy really wants to be human. Do you feel the same way?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it would be nice to be real and all, but human? Seems a lot of work to me.”

Boris had stars in his eyes when he mentioned being real, and I could hear the longing in his voice.

Henry made him a promise that he’d do what he could to make things easier on our Toons, but me? I was busy worrying about Shawn using Bendy’s feelings to exploit him into going off to church with him some day and getting himself exorcised. I was worried enough to need Henry make me a recording about what happened with him and Bendy again the next morning, one that I would obsessively replay until the Little Miracle Stations arrived that afternoon.

The moment I got the phone call, I left my office and had to dodge two Toons racing Bendy’s bike up and down the halls. I stopped them, chewed them out, and escorted them up to the art department to leave them with Henry.

After that, I went to the delivery room where the new cabinets might as well have been new walls of a little closet. I needed help with them all, so I used them as an excuse to grill Shawn. I’m not proud.

I went to my office, grabbed a tape recorder, and wrote a script for Shawn, which I gave to him in person when I went to the Toy Workshop and demanded he leave the dolls for the day to help me with the Little Miracle Stations instead. It was almost funny: “But ye told me you want another shipment of these dolls ready by first thing tomorrow. I need today to finish the lot!”

I made him haul a brush and an ink bucket to the delivery room anyway and refused to answer his questions. I took the first Little Miracle Station and painted a pentagram with Bendy’s head inside it on its bottom.

Beside me, Shawn squeaked.

Smirking, I ordered him to read the script.

His eyes went to it. “Why me?”

“Because you’re the most devout Christian in the company. If anyone can order angels around, it’s going to be you.”

He went white. “Mister Drew, we cannot order angels around! Only God can do such a thing!”

I kept arguing with him, but he begged to replace the script and threatened to leave. Finally, I approved him giving an ave and painting a halo on the station doors. Several minutes into doing the actual work, once Shawn was calmer, he asked how I was alright with letting someone he knew didn’t like the idea of Toons know about the new hiding stations.

“Anyone who dares get the Toons attacked while they’re in these will have both angels and demons after them.” I’m not sure what I was thinking when I made that claim – if I believed the demon part or if I was only trying to use Shawn’s religious beliefs against him. I was young, I was stupid, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.

No matter, I wanted to see the look on Shawn’s face.

It wasn’t the one I expected: he wasn’t pale or trembling. Instead, his eyes were wide and his jaw was parted. “ _This_ was your plan to be keeping the Toons safe?” He took a breath. “I’ll pray for them at the church. Clearly, they need all the help they can be getting.”

I snapped at him. I told him exactly what I thought of him and where he was going. I asked him every paranoid question I had about him and Bendy without giving him time to answer.

I heard him whisper to himself, “Ye are a complete madman! This is not really magic, but simple insanity.”

Don’t worry – I got help. And I got better.

Still, I was irritated with Shawn at the time. On the plus side, he did the work without complaining, and he did his best to answer any questions I had when I could slow down enough to let him.

But I nearly lost my temper with him at the end of the work day: once Shawn clocked out, he came to my office with that note. He talked me into going to hear what the preacher had to say about Toons just once, just to know what he was saying, but I still told him I’d fire him if anything at all happened to my Toons.

That’s not the type of boss you what to be working for is it? I’ll let you ask around about me before you give me your decision about acting.

It’s not the type of boss your dad wanted to be working for either – he came to my office first thing the day after that and told me off. He promised to quit and start up a rival studio if I fired Shawn without being absolutely certain he’d done anything wrong. And with _Henry_ standing up to me, what could I do but back off? I promised him I wouldn’t do anything stupid while he was off for Stuart’s funeral the next day.

  


Every worker’s heard stories of that nightmare boss. The one with unrealistic expectations. The one who takes the credit and skips the blame. The one who never lets you have time off. The one who’s unfair. Is that who your uncle is?

He’s right about one thing – if that’s who he really is, you don’t want to work for him.

If Cat’s right and there’s something to worry about, you really don’t want to work for him.

You sit there quietly to at least get the information your life apparently depends on.

  


Directory Entry 24. Audio Tape 21. Voice of Bendy. Subject: Witness Report. January 19.

Directory Entry 25. Audio Tape 22. Voice of Norman Polk. Subject: Witness Report. January 19.

Directory Entry 26. Audio Tape 23. Voice of Shawn Flynn. Subject: ~~Confession.~~ Witness Report. January 19.

Directory Entry 27. Audio Tape 24. Voice of Thomas Connor. Subject: Witness Report. January 19.

Directory Entry 28. Audio Tape 25. Voice of Wally Franks. Subject: ~~Confession.~~ It’s a witness report! I’ll label my own tapes, Joey! January 19.

  


Bendy went looking for Henry that Friday morning, but he learned he still had the day off for Stuart’s funeral, and when he heard, he asked if the baby was still dead. Norman had to explain to him that real life isn’t like a cartoon – people don’t just get over being dead.

“But in the cartoons, it’s our creators who bring us back! And you have a creator too, dontcha?”

Bendy went back to the safe house, sulking. He stopped short when Boris put a glove on his shoulder and he looked up into a friend’s smile.

“You’re sad again. Let’s go play with Wally.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question of the week:
> 
> What is Joey angry enough at his employees to do?
> 
> Next time:
> 
> Give the poor doggie a bone.


	7. In Which Tom is a Hero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Boris catches Bendy praying, so Henry checks up on him and Joey is a jerk to Shawn Flynn as he makes the man help him finish the Little Miracle Stations.
> 
> Boris suggests playing with Wally.
> 
> Uncle Joey evades your questions.

Document 24 – a newspaper article about Boris being detooned.

Document 25 – typed excerpts from a confession letter, name not included.

Document 26 – a work-related-injury report for Thomas Connor.

  


Uncle Joey refers you back to the map of Level K. He taps a hall that splits in two. “We have two paths that lead between the Heavenly Toys Workshop and the elevator. We call one the Path of the Angel, and the other the Path of the Demon.”

  


The Toons caught Wally on his hands and knees in the Path of the Demon. He was moving trash cans and peering under furniture, looking for the keys he’d lost yet again.

But when Bendy and Boris asked to play with him, he agreed. He’d use the excuse that it was more important to keep the Toons out of trouble anyway, because aren’t they what matter?

That last point wouldn’t save him his job here, even today. Not with the lives of the other two with him on the line.

At the time, they had no second thoughts about playing hide-and-go-seek. Bendy and Wally were to hide, and Boris was to seek. The wolf covered his eyes and stood against a wall.

Bendy flashed a grin at Wally and tip-toed off. The little devil didn’t go all that far – just into the workshop and under Shawn’s desk.

Shawn didn’t know why Bendy was hiding. He scooted his chair back, knelt on the floor with him, and asked.

Bendy put a finger over his mouth and whispered that he was playing a game. He asked Shawn not to tell Boris he was there.

But Boris was on the stairs, near the door for Level 11, the next floor down, moving out of Tom’s way as the man went past.

Because the wolf didn’t go looking Bendy’s way, and because Shawn knew how Bendy got when he was bored, he slipped a few toys under the desk for the demon. As Boris still didn’t come looking, he struck up a conversation.

Somehow, prayer came up, and Bendy had questions from Tuesday. Like why Henry’s baby was still dead, for instance. He hoped it would be like one of those scenes where no one realizes a Toon is still alive until the funeral.

Shawn explained it this way: “But that’s not prayer’s nature. Sure, sometimes God will be givin’ His children stuff like any lovin’ parent, but does talkin’ to a parent change a decision made for ye? No! It be more along the lines of Him reassurin’ you His will be His will and everything will be fine. Not that ye always understand it, mind you.”

Bendy didn’t always understand his creators either, but at least he could talk to humans face-to-face every day and learn more about the folks who made him. He talked to Shawn a little more. In fact, he wanted to ask Shawn what it meant that he felt better after talking to God, but he would have to wait on that because just as he was about to ask-

Bang!

Within Level K, the sound carried as far as the workshop. It reached Shawn and Bendy. It reached Tom, who was repairing a pipe in the restroom. It reached Wally, who had been hiding in a niche off the stairway.

Bendy asked Shawn what the sound was.

Shawn was already on his feet. He listened hard, in case he could pick up a shooter running his way, but any sounds there might have been were drowned out in the creaking groaning of the workshop’s machinery. “Can’t say I know for sure, but I sure know what I hope it is not. I’ll take a look-see.”

He didn’t take even one step forward before Bendy latched onto his hand.

He had to pull it away. “I can’t tell ye if ye’ll be safe comin’ along, but I can’t tell ye ye’ll be safe here either. Stay behind me.”

Bendy was frightened enough to listen. Wild imaginations filled his head about what a Detooner might look like. A thug in a ski mask? An escaped prisoner in those striped uniforms? A Western outlaw, with a bandana covering the face? The poor demon was trembling so badly that he almost couldn’t keep up as Shawn sprinted through the angel path.

They ran through the toy storage, toward the sound and the restroom where Tom was working that day.

Bendy wasn’t the only whose head was filled with wild imaginations: Tom wasn’t sure who had been shot, so as he ran from the bathroom, he didn’t know if he should expect to find a coworker bleeding out on the floor; a hungry wolf chowing down on the corpse of his attacker, gore spurting everywhere; or if he would get out there and find things a little too quiet at first – maybe with some knocks on the wood and cut-outs moving by themselves and someone possessed. He was cursing his luck to work around things he considered so unholy.

What he found was a quiet elevator and an open door to the stairs.

There were no other humans around – the Detooner was already sprinting up the stairs, pulling his coat up to prevent Wally from recognizing him. Near the elevator was just Tom.

Tom climbed down from the balcony, and when he turned the corner, he saw a big, black gray wolf with a white snout sniffing his surroundings and stumbling over Boris’s overall’s cuffs. It growled.

Tom turned to run for the restrooms, but Boris caught his legs in his teeth and pulled him back toward the landing. He was kicking and screaming enough to be heard up the stairs, and his shouts were clearer in the toy storage room at the start of the balcony.

Upstairs, the Detooner grimaced. It came as a surprise to him that Boris the Wolf would hurt anyone, even after losing his Toon status. But he knew there were less suspicious people to check on the injured party, so he gave Wally the slip and walked out past Norman.

Wally had just lost sight of the Detooner’s dark trench coat when Tom started screaming. He turned back to see if everyone was alright instead. He couldn’t see how such shrieks could be a good thing.

Tom’s shrieks were even clearer in the toy storage room, which Shawn and Bendy had reached. Shawn tried to protect Bendy from the sight of Boris digging his fangs into Tom’s leg – even obscured as it was at that angle – by stopping in the frame. “Turn around. That Miracle Station out in the workshop? Hide ye in it.”

But Tom’s cries weren’t quiet, and Bendy wasn’t deaf. He squeezed past Shawn’s legs and dodged his hand, believing that between himself and his best friend, they could take the Detooner anyway. Even if Boris was a real wolf already.

It goes without saying that Bendy was shocked to see who Boris caught, doesn’t it? Someone they knew detooned Boris? Or so he assumed. His eyes widened, and his jaw dropped.

He looked like a fish in Tom’s eyes, but Tom didn’t have time to worry if Bendy had mistaken him for a Detooner or not: he wasn’t sure where the actual Detooner was, and he didn’t want a real demon around the place. He called out to Shawn to get Bendy to safety.

Bendy ran forward and jumped on Tom’s back. He grabbed Boris’s jaw. “Boris, that’s enough! We got him!”

His hands slid toward Boris’s mouth, and the wolf let go, still growling at Tom.

Bendy gave the smile he thought would best reassure his friend. “I’m takin’ his gun away. See? I’ve got it right-”

The Toon patted the plain wood beside Tom and came up with a plunger. He looked around for a pen gun, but there was none to be found.

Tom told him what he was actually doing on the scene. Because he had a plunger with an ink-and-urine-soaked handle instead of a weapon, Bendy believed him.

Shawn thought it was a reasonable story too, especially with Tom’s ongoing warnings that Bendy was still in danger and needed to hide. So he helped Bendy calm Boris down, the two of them stroking the wolf’s fur as though he were a Husky rather than a wild animal.

But how could they calm a wolf that must have been hearing unidentified footsteps?

Even before they got Boris as calm as they could, Tom insisted that Bendy go hide because of how recently he’d seen Boris as himself. He knew the culprit might still be near.

Bendy’s knees started shaking, and he started biting his gloves. “You think so?”

Tom shifted to cover Boris from anyone at the stairway door. “I don’t think anyone would come back to detoon you with a live wolf right here and all the ruckus we’ve been making, but you can never be too safe.”

The little devil relaxed. And what did he say about that moment later? “Tom’s my hero! He might not like us Toons, but he’d never hurt us. Why would he protect us if he wanted to do that? Ain’t his actions much more important than what he thinks?”

When he told the others he heard footsteps a moment later and was sent to hide in the nearest Little Miracle Station, he even sent a smile Tom’s way. He stayed silently in the cabinet until it was determined that Wally wasn’t a threat.

  


Document 27 – the employer copy of Wally Franks’s dismissal notice. January 19.

Document 28 – an editorial about Pride the Lion.

Document 29 – a photocopy of a checkbook register with all but its top entry blacked out. It shows that Uncle Joey paid for two plane tickets on January 22.

  


Shawn, Tom, Wally, and Bendy brought Boris to my office, and I let my temper lose on the three employees. I’m forever grateful that Henry’s threat kept me from doing something even more stupid and dismissing them all on the spot – I knew what would happen if I fired Shawn without being able to prove he was involved, and I imagined Henry would behave similarly if I did it to Tom or Wally.

Still, my words to the three were colored by my distress at seeing Boris’s fate and my worries of what I was going to say to Henry. It was enough to get my tie yanked by Bendy and get an earful from him.

I stared at my little devil, as I’d been unaware that all three of the three were Bendy’s, as he put it, “pals.”

After working my tie free from his grip, I put a hand on his cold, inky head. “You know I don’t mean any of it, don’t you?” I asked, although I’d meant most of what I said. “I’m upset is all.”

“We don’t like it either. Ya don’t have ta yell at anyone.”

I promised Bendy I’d get to the bottom of it. For the moment, I wanted him to sit in the corner with Boris and comfort the poor wolf.

It was a bluff, and I’m sure we all knew it: for all that Boris growled when Tom got too close, he was otherwise acting alright with his situation. He kept sniffing around my office, especially at everyone in the room. He was wagging his tail, and his tongue was hanging out of his jaw.

As hungry as the wolf he was, but very friendly, that was Boris – in both forms of his.

Still, Bendy took Boris to the corner and held him to him. Boris kept sniffing, licking, and rubbing against Bendy.

I kept half an eye on them, in case any of my employees were stupid enough to act out in front of everyone, but in the meantime, I got out three blank cassette tapes and filled in the subject of each of them as _confession._ I handed them out and told my employees to go their separate ways and tell me what happened. I gave one to Bendy too, but I trusted him more than I trusted them.

And me? I swallowed back the worry in my throat as I dialed Henry’s number. But I supposed the Steins must have still been at the funeral, because I got the answering machine. I left a message asking Henry to call me back.

Within the hour, I had four tapes returned to me. I noticed with annoyance that Tom had switched his out for a blank cassette that he labeled himself.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but none of my employees admitted to their tape being a confession. That’s what I was listening for – confessions. Since none of them were, the only thing I got out of it was that Wally thought Norman Polk might know something, so I sent him with a tape labeled _confession_ to deliver to our projectionist.

I didn’t listen to what Norman had to say either. The only one I really listened to was Bendy.

Since he knew Shawn didn’t do it and Tom didn’t have the right equipment to do it, I ruled them out. I checked the security footage, but there was nothing suspicious there either. I knew it had to be one of my employees, and one that Boris trusted enough not to attack at that. But that was as far as I could get with my own resources and paranoia.

So what did I do about it? I blamed Wally. I didn’t know if he’d done it, but I knew that he had a role in having Boris out in the open, playing that stupid game, and I knew that his constantly loosing his keys was a major security risk to Bendy. Why, next time, it could have been just anyone coming in from the outside, unlocking the studio in the middle of the night!

I gave the keys as the primary reason for his dismissal.

The only good thing I did? I was forced to admit that I couldn’t handle keeping Bendy safe all by myself. I took a risk while I was waiting for Henry to call back. I picked up the big fat handle of my phone again and called Safe Gag Studios to ask if their offer to protect Bendy was still valid. I wanted to feel out their security measures and ask about the possibility of sending one trusted employee with my little devil.

I kept Bendy and Boris in my office with me the rest of the day, where I paced and worried until Henry had a chance to call me back. By that point, our regular hours were almost over, but I was willing to stay with Bendy and Boris all night. All weekend really. And how could I blame Bendy for climbing up on the desk to steal the phone and cry to Henry about what happened to his best friend?

Even with only half the conversation to go off, it seemed that Henry did a better job at comforting Bendy than I did – the devil wiped his eyes and held out a hand to pet Boris.

Whatever Bendy said to him, Henry agreed to come in that night. He probably would have come anyway, knowing him.

When he showed up, he had a fresh trout for Boris wrapped up in an old newspaper. He had a second newspaper in his hands away from the fish, and he took Bendy up to the safe house to get his doll before he came to talk to us all about the article: it was an opinion piece about how evil our competitors were for spoiling a detooned Pride the Lion after he mauled the Detooner who tried to kill him.

Henry sat in my spare office chair, across from me, and laid the article down. With Boris at our sides and Bendy in his lap, he started to talk about what he believed it meant for Boris: sure it was upsetting what happened, but he wasn’t the first predatory animal to be detooned. Pride the Lion was still acting much like himself, and he was living a good life over at his studio. He wanted the same for Boris.

I don’t think Bendy understood much of it. He spent the time crying and apologizing to Boris for being a demon, as though that had anything to do with his friend being detooned. He even slid off Henry’s lap and wrapped his arms around the wolf.

But Henry still had that look he gets when he’s worried about something: looking away, eyes clouded over, legs shuffling him across his seat. He pulled Bendy into a close hug, and I’m willing to bet we were worried about the same thing: cartoon animals might still be almost themselves if they survive being detooned, but what about a species like demons?

I knew he had a lot on his plate at home with Stuart and all, but I asked if he’d be willing to go to New Orleans with Bendy, and he agreed.

After that, Henry picked Bendy up and told him firmly that it was not his fault and that the two of them could go make new friends in Louisiana. He offered to help Bendy pack his favorite things, and the two of them left my office to do so.

I stayed behind to look after Boris.

  


Directory Entry 29 – Audio Tape 26. Voice of: Henry Stein. Subject: Bendy. January 19.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> Will Bendy behave himself on the plane?
> 
> Question of the week:
> 
> Have you ever blamed yourself for something you shouldn’t have?


	8. In Which Studios Have Guns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Boris gets detooned, so Joey fires Wally and asks Henry to accompany Bendy to Safe-Gag Studios.

I managed to get Henry and Bendy plane tickets for Wednesday, and the next several days were spent keeping Bendy and Boris close. With the conclusions Henry had reached about the type of person who must have detooned Boris, I reviewed the evidence I’d already collected, but I put the investigation on hold until I knew Bendy was going to be safe.

Early Wednesday morning, I made Norman Polk get up and drive them to the airport. I came along to say goodbye.

We picked Henry up first. He had a suitcase and a bag that he put in Norman’s trunk, and Norman glared at him while he did so. Before Henry climbed in, Norman leaned over and whispered, “Are you sure he’s the best man to protect Bendy?”

I crossed my arms. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else with the job.”

And I stared him down, daring him to contradict me.

He did. “At least believe me that he’s not in a good emotional state to be looking after a Toon.”

My argument? To insult Norman.

He kept quiet as we drove to the studio to get Bendy. The little demon was waiting inside the door, suitcase on the floor, and Boris in a hug. I let him bring Boris on the ride to the airport, which Bendy spent buried under the wolf, arms wrapped in his thick fur.

It was the quietest I ever heard the Toon.

We arrived at the airport a half-hour later, one of those tiny ones with just a drop-off point for those of us saying goodbye, but while Henry was unloading his luggage, Bendy was opening the passenger door and climbing on my lap for a hug.

Because he was trembling, I made him a promise that day: that I would always care for him, even if he turned into a real demon.

  


You know Bendy didn’t stay good when he was detooned – you’ve heard of the haunting and the death. Did Uncle Joey make good on his promise by hiding Bendy away from punishment?

And then there’s what Cat told you. It’s like you need to know what Bendy is capable of if you want to escape with your life.

What might tip off your uncle that you suspect his game? Do you have sweaty, trembling palms to hide? A pale face to pass off as something else? If you were to speak, how would your voice do?

But it’s not like you’re doing a good job at hiding it – what else does it mean that your uncle pausse and his eyes are on you?

You force a smile. “Go on.”

  


I waited the rest of the day for Henry to check in. The first time he called, it was only to tell me that the flight landed safely and Bendy was too busy cuddling into his creator’s shirt to notice the looks the other passengers kept shooting him. It says a lot, doesn’t it? How differently people react to Toons in real life than on the silver screen.

The second time was much later, and he called to tell me the expectations Safe-Gag Studios set for Bendy’s safety with their tour.

He also encouraged me to get a gun to protect Boris.

  


A gun? Does your uncle carry one now? You weren’t looking for the bulk of a concealed weapon earlier, and now the desk prevents you from doing so.

Your uncle is stopping again to give you that look – the one with the frown, the crinkled brow, and the … how would you describe it? The glint? The gleam? The steel? … in his eyes. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

What is better, a yes or a no? Should you even answer?

You ask to use the bathroom and follow your uncle’s directions to the men’s room on the next floor up. You do anything you have to and wash up, splashing cold water against your face. Against your black hair, your face looks especially white compared to normal. You’re young and in shape, but even if your muscles were bulky or your legs could match an Olympic sprinter’s, how would that help you against a demon or a bullet?

Right now, your goal is not to study business, it is not to be your uncle’s heir, it’s to get out of this unharmed. How to proceed? Do you beg Cat to get you out? Do you sneak your way out of this labyrinthine studio? Do you play along with your uncle’s schemes until you have an opening to catch him off guard?

The way in was full of twists and turns, and you can’t remember them all. But could you bluff if you got into trouble?

Coming to a decision, you leave the men’s room. Promptly, you get lost along the hall you could have sworn had the elevator and end up instead in a common area with couches, tables, and shelves full of ink bottles.

Sitting on a gold-threaded armchair is Alice, a touch of mascara dried under her eyes. She’s eating a plateful of inky cookies, but she pauses to look your way. “Are you done with your uncle?”

If she’s seen you already, you’ve got to get her to help. You place your palms on the nearest table and lean toward her. “You’re supposed to be an angel, ain’cha? Bendy’s rival?”

She gives you a smile, black lipstick glistening under the florescent lights. “Joey reminded me that Bendy and I are supposed to be _friendly_ rivals.”

You straighten. “You’re on his side? You’re really okay with what he has planned for me and that demon?”

“Now that I understand the situation.” She abandons her plate and walks toward you with swaying hips and a _click-clack-click-clack_ of her shoes.

She’s pretty. And nicer to you now. But you couldn’t have the of relationship you’re looking for with her in the long term, and even if you could, it isn’t worth losing your life over. But does that stop your reaction when her soft outer glove brushes up your arm?

You pull away. “I’m just lookin’ for the exit. I ain’t gonna be actin’ here.”

“Acting?” Her voice is soft and sweet, and you could almost believe that the tilt of her head, the blinking of her eyes, and the purse of her lips indicate genuine confusion. Or is it almost? For all you know, Uncle Joey lied to her.

“Yes, actin’.” You take her hand and place it first against your cheek and then in your hair. “See? Warm flesh, blood flowin’ underneath, hair and no horns. I’m just guessin’ about what he told ya, but I ain’t a demon. I ain’t Bendy. And if ya don’t believe me, I’ve got documents to prove it!”

Alice plants her lips on your face, and when you try to ask her about what she just did, she wraps her arms around yours. “Did you stay for the whole story?”

“I don’t need the whole story. There ain’t gonna be nothin’ to prove I have ta go along with his evil scheme.”

She’s quiet, so you think she might listen to you. In situations such as this, it does it really matter what you know or what your future holds when you’ve got other attributes you can call on? Are you good at logic? Or at feelings? Do you have a silver tongue? Do people know you as honest? Are you good at making friends? Forgiving enemies? Are you a good friend? Can you otherwise inspire loyalty?

“Look, there ain’t much time before my uncle figures out I got lost on my way from the bathroom-”

She nods. “It’s easy to get lost in here. You were looking for an exit?”

“Yeah.”

But Alice doesn’t take you anywhere right away, so you tell her what you think you should.

With a smile that lights her eyes, she agrees to help. She leads you up a narrow staircase, into the elevator, and pushes a button.

When the elevator opens, you recognize where you are – just a few yards from your uncle’s office! You try to step back into the elevator, she pulls you forward. You dig your feet into the floorboards.

Alice pats your arm. “I don’t know the whole story either, but I don’t want to believe Joey’s evil. I’ll stay with you and hear him out. Is that okay?”

You’re not making any progress back toward the elevator. Does it embarrass you that Alice is stronger than you? Or does knowing how much Toons can lift in their shows make it okay?

The only thing you can get is a promise that Alice will get you out before anything goes wrong. And if she’ll come, it’s only fair for you to take her with you and protect her from your creep of an uncle. Together, the two of you reenter Uncle Joey’s office.

You watch his hands in case he might reach for a gun.

They don’t. They fold together and form a cover for his mouth. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Alice says. “Something happened to scare him. Then he got lost on his way from the bathroom.”

Uncle Joey’s eyes turn to you. “Is she staying?”

You nod.

There’s only one of those slated chairs on your side of your uncle’s desk, but he directs the two of you toward another office to grab a second. He doesn’t start his story again until the both of you are seated as comfortably as you can be on your cool, rough chairs, and then, not without the words, “I promise it’s not as frightening as it seems. I’m only trying to help you reach your full potential and keep my family safe.”

  


There were security issues that made it difficult for Henry to fully assure me of our Toons’ safety. He couldn’t tell me where in New Orleans they were – downtown? On the outskirts of town? Or off by themselves altogether? But he could assure me that there were good locks, surveillance, and armed guards who liked the Toons.

Knowing he couldn’t tell me much didn’t stop me from asking him a million questions, trying to harass everyone I could contact for more details, or calling Safe-Gag Studios up every day to demand to speak with Bendy.

It’s probably a good thing no one was willing to tell me much.

Henry thought the biggest threat to Bendy’s safety came in the form of hazing from the other Toons. Imagine this: one of your own has been attacked, so your parents send everyone across the country. You don’t get to see them, and you’re locked inside all day. And then what happens? A demon shows up and you’re locked in with him!

When he put it like that, I could no longer be surprised by what he and Cat described.

  


Document 30 – a photo of Bendy and Cat, each Toon poking their head out of a crate, Bendy grinning at the camera and Cat smirking instead.

Document 31 – an old poster that says _Pirate Time!_ with pie-eyed Toons gathered around the words – three dogs, a cat, a kraken, a pearl, and a bird. You recognize Cat and Diggie. You have a guess who Pirate Pup is from his bandana. You can’t say the same about the horse-sized kraken, the pearl that’s wearing a black-rimmed crown, the dog with a military uniform and a captain’s hat, or the parakeet in the same uniform as the dog.

  


The day Bendy arrived, there were already Toons from three different studios living in the safe facility: Safe-Gag Studios, PirateTime Studios, and Warner Bros. Arnie led him and Henry to a commons area for the Toons and introduced them, and they all faked a smile until the rich boy left. Afterward, they did their best to keep to their own studios and avoid Bendy.

It didn’t stop Bendy from looking around. In moments, he was tugging on Henry’s leg, frown on his face.

Henry bent. “What is it?”

“Where are Goopy Geer and Pirate Pup?”

Henry rubbed the little devil’s head, watching his face closely with what he was about to say. “Everyone here can relate to losing Boris.”

Bendy’s eyes widened, but he struck Henry as more cheerful than he’d been all day.

In fact, in that moment, Bendy was at the acceptance phase of mourning. He looked out at all his fellow Toons. He could recognize most Toons there – the Warner Bros’ Bosko, Buddy, Foxy, and Piggy – all of whom were hanging out with the Toon from the one studio he wasn’t familiar with – and Pirate Time’s Diggie Dog, Cat Earrin’, Crank the Kraken, Pearly Princess, and Juan Quistador and Private Parakeet.

Several yards away, Pearly Princess was talking to Crank the Kraken, and Bendy was gazing at them wide-eyed, head filled with thoughts of new friends.

Henry had to do some paperwork with Arnie, so he egged Bendy to go introduce himself, and over Bendy ran. “Hiya! I’m Bendy. I loved seein’ ya in ‘Oy-ngry Oysters!’”

Pearly shrieked and rolled behind Crank, and Crank wrapped his tentacle around Bendy’s ankle. He hoisted the demon in the air.

Bendy called for Henry, but he was already gone.

Crank lifted Bendy toward his single eye and salt-crusted beak. “A demon like you has no place at sea. Begone!”

He tossed Bendy so high that he brushed the ceiling. Bendy crashed into a brown-brick wall and thudded to the floor. Stars twirled around his head, but he shook them off. His head plopped off, and he scooped it up in one arm and set it back above his body.

The demon straightened his bow tie, non-existent nose in the air. “Fine. I didn’t need to be friends with you anyway.”

He walked toward the Warner Bros. and Safe-Gag characters and offered them his hand and a big grin, but the Merry Melody characters screamed like little girls and scattered while Scotty Safe pretended to be inanimate. He was left to frown at the other Toons’ balancing feat where they fit perched up on a single rounded cross-beam.

Behind him, someone else was watching, someone much lonelier than she cared to admit. “Yer regained yer cool and was aloof after the princess and the kraken. If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d say ye were a cat, matey! Yer like me, a true loner. Neither of us need any friends.”

Daring to hope those were words of welcome, Bendy turned toward Cat. “But do ya wanna be?”

She crossed her arms. “Cats have no friends, but if I needed company, ye are less inferior to me than the rest of the Toons.”

Bendy saw straight through her lie and recognized the _yes_. He narrowed his eyes at Diggie Dog when she shouted, “I knew it! Cats. Demons. I knew ye were the same monsters!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> Cats are better.
> 
> Question of the week:
> 
> When do you feel safest?


	9. In Which a Guilty Party is Named

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Henry and Bendy go to New Orleans, where the other Toons are scared of Bendy but Cat is lonely enough to say hi.
> 
> In the present, you’re nervous about your uncle’s possibly carrying a gun, so you use the bathroom as an excuse to leave and run into Alice, who takes you back to Uncle Joey.

Cat told me she yawned and stretched her paws above her head, but Bendy told me Cat was crossing her arms and had her lips twitching. They both reported that she said something like, “Of course not. Cats take the booty fer bein’ evil – we do it fer fun, and our dastardly deeds are more thought-out. They’re graceful. If ye ever saw Bendy’s show, ye’d know he’s a clumsy kid who just can’t help bein’ a prankster.”

She leaned a paw on Scotty’s smooth side.

Scotty peeked an eye open and spoke quietly. “You’re as prideful as a demon. Only reason you ain’t as scary is you ain’t got a demon’s power.”

Only Cat heard him – not even a demon’s hearing could pick up on what he said.

What Bendy did hear was Cat’s “Shut yer trap!”

He was curious about everything, so he walked closer to her. “Are ya really evil? Ya aren’t the nicest in the show, but ya never would have been that nice to me if ya were.”

“Are ye callin’ me soft?”

He held out a hand and asked if she wanted to prank the other PirateTime Toons with him. The two were chasing Diggie Dog around within moments.

Bendy was grateful to have a friend – scared, yes, but grateful.

So was Cat. Mostly. At one point, she needed to have Henry give her a talking-to about the way she really felt about the other Toons’ talking about her and Bendy, but she was grateful not to be so lonely anymore – and trying to hide that gratitude all the while.

Of course, when they first came to life, neither of them dreamed of befriending another Toon in protective custody after losing a valued coworker, so their friendship started as an afterimage of a dream rather than a dream come true. And the safety in New Orleans during most of Bendy’s first two weeks? A consolation prize.

  


Document 32 – a PI report on Boris’s Detooning – much of its information blacked out.

Document 33 – a newspaper article with an image of a man’s stubble-covered face. “DETOONING TURNED DEADLY.” The picture is captioned _Possessed shooter at Joey Drew Studios._ February 25.

  


I was under a lot of stress back here, but I’m ashamed to say that I came down too hard on the employees that stayed behind. Why, just the day after Henry and Bendy flew out, Shawn turned in that resignation of his! Norman and Tom were muttering about all the scrutiny I kept putting their behavior under, and whenever I opened a door to any of the break rooms, I kept hearing whispers about quitting.

It was my first inkling that I might be too harsh. As much as I wanted an answer that made sense to me about Boris’s detooning, I couldn’t have my employees just up and quit left and right. What else could I do? I hired a private investigator to get to the bottom of things and turned my attention elsewhere – to replacing Wally and Shawn and to caring for Boris.

Caring for Boris was easy, if expensive. I bought him more than two dozen steaks a week to keep his stomach full, but it was better than him getting desperate enough to chow down on anyone. Caring for him was comforting, really – thick fur that got softer the more I stroked it – and a warm wolf always happy to cuddle.

Replacing Shawn was simple enough. Just hire a young toy maker named Lorelei Underton.

I kept Boris away from her and our other new recruit, but the two of them weren’t under nearly as much scrutiny as the rest of my employees: since they didn’t work there, they couldn’t have gotten Boris.

Considering that our new janitor was the thug in the paper, that was a mistake.

But I promised Henry I wouldn’t mistreat the workers too badly, and I promised myself I wouldn’t scare off my entire workforce, and I was keeping that promise – while the PI was at work, my attention was on a wolf who was getting lethargic and starting to smell funny. I spent hours on end with the sick wolf, him on my lap as I searched the yellow pages for a decent vet.

I get caught up in things sometimes. In fact, I was so absorbed in reading reviews for Mother Nature’s Veterinary Clinic that I startled when the PI walked in with his final report, and I spilled my coffee all over the phone book.

It was a lot like hearing things from my employees all over again – the PI gave me the same conclusions that I didn’t want to hear. And then he gave me something more: after hours of talking to county recorders and the clerk of the secretary of state’s office, and several more of sitting in on public sermons and Detooner meetings, he had a probable motive.

He handed in a report and a folder of evidence that I threw into the trash at first. I screamed that he would never have business with Joey Drew Studios again, but the motive was too fitting: an industry insider who believed a lot of that stuff about the Toons he loved and was trying to ease a guilty conscience. After all, if the Toons could become real, they would no longer suffer from lives that are the devil’s doing, right?

  


Your uncle may think he’s concealing who shot Boris, but have you ever seen anyone so transparent? Who else would he forgive for their having good intentions? Who else would the Joey Drew of back then not want to believe did it so badly?

Even Alice knows it’s your dad, what her sniffling nose, her cold fingers digging into your arm, and her quietly asking what sort of person her creator is.

But you – he raised you – you’re not sure what sort of person he was back then, but you know he’s changed. He brought Alice to life, and he wants you to talk to Joey. Do you know what to make of that?

Regardless, right now, there is a sad Toon – a sad girl – at your side. What do you do or say? What skills or traits do you have that could best help her out? You wrap your arms around her cool shoulders and lean into her inky hair and take in a breath of fresh sketch. Leaning toward her ear, you whisper to her.

How long has it been since you’ve done something for someone? How did it turn out for you? What did you think about yourself after? Did you have a relationship grow? Or at least a better idea of who you really are? It was worth it, wasn’t it?

Alice isn’t done sniffling, but she leans into your touch and thanks you.

Uncle Joey is watching the two of you. “I never said it was Henry.”

You tell him how obvious it is.

Your uncle’s eyes rest on Alice. You hold her a bit tighter in case he tries anything, but all he does is speak: “He does love his Toons. He thought all Toons were having as hard a time as Bendy and Boris, so he wanted to make things easier on them. He changed his mind after Bendy’s detooning, and even drew enough of you to come to life over that weekend. Said he wanted me to have _someone_ if I was going to fire him. I listened to his reasons, his guilt, and I decided not to press charges.”

And you tell Alice what you already know of the outcome – every family has at least that one member with a less-than-stellar record. It’s inevitable with how often you get tickets for minor infractions like speeding, but then there’s the uncle with the temper or the teen with the bad habits or the rebel who just won’t conform to public norms.

Your dad was fined for trespassing and vandalism back in the day, but you were never sure what that meant. You suppose if the Toons weren’t legally persons eighteen years ago, then any damage to them would only be considered vandalism.

And so your dad feels guilty. How far does that guilt go?

  


Bendy and Cat were friends, but they had a rough time of it. Safe-Gag Studios understood their mischief, but they still had the occasional complaint when they lashed out against security.

One time, the Toons were going at their normal ribbing and teasing when it went too far.

It was very early in Bendy’s stay at Safe-Gag studios, and he still hadn’t heard a word about Cat’s “betrayal” of PirateTime Studios in letting Pirate Pup get detooned when Cat asked what he thought of cats as animals.

Bendy missed Boris. The memory of finding him biting Tom came so easily to his mind. “I’m more of a dog person. Ya know a dog’s gonna love ya enough to try to protect ya, no matter what happens to him.”

Cat hissed and called him a thick-skulled landlubber. She ran off, leaving him to wonder what that was all about.

As Bendy went through the halls looking for someone to ask about Cat, Cat went to the Archembault’s library and climbed on a bookcase to pout. She let off some steam by knocking books and knick-knacks onto unsuspecting passersby, who were mainly guards making their rounds.

The guards tried to calm her and coax her down, but they were still at it when Henry showed up with Bendy.

Henry was there the night Pirate Pup got detooned, and he remembered a cat yowling as he fled the premises, so he had a good guess what was going on. “Please come down. Bendy was just talking about how much he misses Boris.”

Even for him, it took a bit, but he was able to assure Cat that Bendy didn’t mean anything against her and get her to come let Bendy make it up to her.

The next incident was just a day later.

Henry suggested to Bendy that he should get to know more about Cat, so Bendy took the suggestion. The two of them were playing under a large cardboard box that was their hideout for the day, and he was asking questions about cats – what Cat thought of them and how she compared to the real thing.

Cat didn’t mind. She saw it as an opportunity to brag about her species – cute, independent, and selectively affectionate. All the things she likes best about herself.

But Cat, being Cat, also had an element of self-centeredness to her and didn’t think how she might affect those around her. “Fer Toons like us, it be splendid that writers get lazy in their characterization an’ make us what they see as typical fer our species. Why wouldn’t I want to be one fine cat?”

“Did my writers get lazy too?”

Cat grinned. “Yer a typical demon, matey!”

She later said she meant it as a compliment, and she might have too.

Regardless, Bendy took the box from over their heads and threw it across the room. He whooshed off before Cat could comprehend what she said wrong.

The next thing anyone knows about Bendy is that the guards out on the damp lawn were being sprinkled with rainbow glitter, and when they looked up, they could see him leaning out the window – giggling.

The little demon ran all over the safe house with his glitter. Not only was it in the security outfits, but it got in Private Parakeet’s fur and Henry’s macaroni-and-cheese.

Henry grabbed him and held him to his chest until he calmed down. “Bendy, why there are little pieces of glass in my lunch?”

It was time like those that Henry sorted the two Toons out. Safe-Gag Studios appreciated his help with them, and his getting to know each of the other Toons in their care.

For Henry, getting to know the Toons was about looking for another soul he could “redeem” from their ink, but helping with Cat and Bendy was about taking care of the devil he’d brought to life. As he got to know Cat, he was sorry he couldn’t put her into a “better state,” as he called it, but he knew Bendy needed a friend. All he could do to help her deal with all the new comments about hanging out with someone as “dangerous” and “deceptive” as a demon was to give her pep talks.

But Bendy too noticed how bothered Cat was for all her sticking her nose in the air and pretending not to care. For his part, he once again showed he was religious. In the corner of the entrance hall were some crates, and Bendy slipped behind them with his doll, not once looking up.

If he had, he would have seen Cat lying there, watching whatever it is Cats watch for when they’ve climbed up high and are staring down at the world below them. She was about to call down to her mate, but he was already kneeling in front of the doll. “Could ya help me ask for a deal with God?”

God wasn’t someone Cat dealt much with, but she had a better idea who he is than poor Boris did. She says her eavesdropping on the first part of her friend’s prayer had nothing to do with her feline curiosity and everything to do instead with her gobsmackedness, but how reliable a source has she proved to be? She curled her fingers around the rough-grained crates and leaned closer.

“I know I’m a demon, but I don’t wanna be bad! It’s hard. Cat said I’m a typical demon. I need help. If I can just have even _one_ friend who won’t get in trouble for bein’ my friend, then I promise I’ll be good ta all your creations!”

Cat said she had to do something if she would have to live with Bendy, but she likely felt guilty and worried because of Bendy’s prayer. She leaped from the crate, landing on her paw pads lightly enough that she didn’t disturb the bargaining demon, and went to find Henry.

Henry wasn’t far. He was just in the next room, grabbing a wet, squished ham sandwich out of the staff’s mini-fridge. When Cat told him what was going on, he cursed under his breath and pounded a fist against the table, angry at himself for creating a Toon he couldn’t save through detooning, no matter how much Bendy wanted it.

The look on his face – teeth clenched, eyebrows lowered, breathing heavy – scared Cat. She admitted to being worried for Bendy.

Henry saw Cat jump back and took a deep breath. “Sorry. It’s just he’s done this before. He thought it could reverse God’s judgment for my dead child.”

He got out of his seat and went to find Bendy.

Cat tagged along behind him.

When the two of them reached Bendy, he hadn’t finished his prayer, but Henry’s footsteps startled him enough to stop him mid-word. He might have seen something he didn’t like still on Henry’s face, because he hid his doll behind his back and gave that big, toothy grin of his. “Creator!”

Henry knelt on the hard floor and reached for his Toon. Once he had Bendy in his arms, he asked, “What’s this about people being punished for being friends with you?”

He had always assumed he was the one being punished, but he had to stay and comfort Bendy as the demon spelled out how Henry losing his child and Boris being detooned was his punishment for daring to have friends as a demon.

Henry glanced over his shoulder. Cat was watching the scene wide-eyed. He forced a smile. “It’s alright.”

Bendy sniffed. An inky tear escaped his closed eye.

Henry wiped it away. “You did everything you were expected to do, and nothing that’s worth making your life miserable. It is not your fault. Bad things happen all the time, and we don’t always understand why, but it doesn’t mean good people are being punished.”

No, he couldn’t “save” Bendy the way he wanted, but he could reduce his suffering. He was relieved to see his eyes opening up, hope returning to those black pie-shapes.

“Ya sure? I’m a demon, ain’t I?”

“If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s the fault of the Detooner that entered our studio and shot Boris.”

Bendy felt a bit better, but he still had his worries.

Henry could tell this from the demon’s stiff ink. It wasn’t as though he was over his crisis of faith, but he knew he wouldn’t be shooting Bendy’s newest friend, and he thought the demon might feel better with another prayer. He called Cat over to join them.

“What do you think? With three of us asking, God’s got to listen.”

Though it had very little faith on Henry’s part, it had the effect that he was hoping for on Bendy. Still, he opened, “Dear God, whatever we’ve done, please forgive us.”

And as he knelt there with Bendy and Cat, he was still thinking about which Toon to target next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> The horrible truth.
> 
> Question of the week:
> 
> How would you most hate to be known?


	10. In Which there was Another Chance at a Good Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Cat and Bendy become friends; Joey hires Bill Bell and, in the present fails to conceal that Henry is the one who Detooned Boris; and Henry tries to help Bendy feel less guilty about things beyond Bendy’s control.

Things weren’t particularly eventful for the next few weeks. Sure, I called Henry and Bendy and we checked in on each other, but the most exciting thing that happened was Henry mentioning that he’d bought something from Bill Bell once and thought he was suspicious. He suggested I ask around if anyone at the studio knew him.

Shawn did. With his job no longer on the line, he admitted to me that he was a Detooner and so was Bell.

I fired Bell on the spot and told Shawn not to come back to work.

It worked. Boris perked up within days and was back to his happy, friendly self.

  


As you and Alice are skimming the next two documents, Uncle Joey clears his throat. “I have a few things I didn’t want to include because they were too incriminating of Henry. Do you want me to have them collected for you?”

Do you really? Are you curious? Or do you just want to find out what you need to to get out of this studio?

But Alice is sniffling, so you try to comfort her. And you tell Uncle Joey, “Maybe later.”

  


Document 34 – a copy of a confession sent to the Archembault family, only a few paragraphs not blacked out.

Document 35 – a newspaper article about a detooning at Safe-Gag Studios. February 11.

  


Things were more interesting over in Safe-Gag Studios. It was a Friday, and Archie used that as an excuse to spoil the Toons – pizza and punch and ice cream for everyone!

He had the food on a long table with a thick white cloth in a small ballroom. In the corner, he a grand piano set up and finely tuned, with a mike for a ragtime singer. The music was echoing and the Toons were dancing.

Bendy in particular had a larger grin than he’d had in a while. It’s amazing what a little magic, a little dreaming, back in your life will do for you: he hopped on a folding table and did a little tap solo. When the music changed, he hopped down and bowed to Cat, offering her his hand.

Cat had never danced with anyone before, but she swallowed her nerves for the sake of her friend.

For his part, Bendy never complained when she stepped on his feet. Can’t tell how much that is that he’s a good friend, how much that he was wearing boots, and how much was that the gag never got set off by him noticing her stepping on his feet.

The PirateTime Toons? They weren’t so much into dancing as they were in sword-fighting to the music. But Bendy? Merry Melody? Even Scotty Safe? They all loved music, enough that they even relaxed around Bendy, who got to dance with more than one of the female Toons in the room.

And when he needed a break, he headed to the treats table.

Archie was there sipping on the raspberry-limeade-ice-cream-thingy Bendy was asking me for later. He’d been talking to Toons already, but he grinned when he saw each new Toon approach the table, and he made no exception for Bendy.

At the table were Foxy, Scotty Safe, and Private Parakeet. Bendy noticed the latter two recoil at his presence and then try to hide it from Archie, but Foxy? Foxy was too busy staring into his cup.

“Hey, you alright?”

Foxy dropped his cup. The red slush splattered out across his paws, but he didn’t run from Bendy this time. Who knows if they could have eventually even become friends if it weren’t for his Detooning?

Looking at the floor, Foxy mumbled, “I’m fine,” and excused himself from the party.

Archie sent someone to check on him, but he himself stayed behind.

Couldn’t do to make any of the Toons feel unwelcome, could it? He spent the time talking to Bendy.

Bendy smiled and joked for him, but inside, he was wondering something: how many Toons were actually miserable? It couldn’t be just him and Cat.

When Bendy got a spare moment, he slipped back into the party. He danced his way across the floor, looking for Henry.

Henry had been sitting on the side, alternating between observing and chatting with Cat and the other Toons. Being Bendy’s creator, he noticed something was up, but really, is it so hard for any human to read a Toon’s face?

On Bendy especially, a small frown and narrow eyes are not normal. “Creator? Can I talk to you?”

For Bendy, Henry was willing to do anything. He took Bendy away from the party. They sat out on the stairs of the entrance hall alone, on that rich-person carpet that ran down marble steps thicker than blood.

Bendy told him about Foxy and all the thoughts that were cluttering his head.

Henry patted Bendy between the horns. “I saw you really enjoying the party. Go back and have fun. Make sure Cat has a good time. I’ll see what I can do for Foxy.”

After he’d watched Bendy run back to the party, a huge grin on his face, Henry went to his small room and got his pen gun from his luggage. He planned his route to look for the Toon: he thought most of the security cameras were around the outside, so the only thing he had to do is not be seen by a living being.

Simple enough.

He filled his pen gun with a single dose of Detooning powder and went to find Foxy.

He followed his usual MO: get the victim alone….

Foxy had already sent the other Toon away, so he was by himself, pouting out on a balcony. The curtained glass doors were shut behind him, and the nearest neighbors were the thick trees that gave the Archembault’s yard some privacy.

…greet them with a smile….

Foxy returned Henry’s greeting, but he was staring at the grounds’ sculpted bushes.

…and get them to agree to be Detooned.

It wasn’t hard. That Toon was miserable.

Bang!

Henry pulled the fox back inside with him and closed the door. He looked around in case anyone had heard something, but he had a feeling that might be a little difficult with the music on full blast.

It was. And the Toons were caught up in it too, so only one person heard: Bendy.

What did the brave, stupid little devil do? He slipped off on his own to investigate. He saw the brown fox that Foxy had become, sniffing around the hallway; and he saw Henry walking away, slipping the pen gun into his pocket.

Henry was still looking around, keeping his eyes and ears wide open. He heard Bendy scuffle against the floor and took off running. He darted through the halls, and when he found one dimly lit, he stopped to glance back and see if he was being followed.

He wasn’t.

He hid his pen gun inside his shoe and went to rejoin the party, where he got in one dance with Cat before Bendy ran in, Foxy squirming in his arms, and shouted, “Stop the music!”

Foxy bit Bendy and sprang from his arms. He darted off and hid behind the rest of the Merry Melodies Toons.

The Toons started panicking. There was screaming, running around in circles, and hiding in nonsensical places like inside the ice cream and behind a skinny little ficus.

Henry and Cat fought their way through the chaos to reach Bendy.

So did security. They reached him before Henry and Cat did.

One of the security guards bent down and asked Bendy if he’d seen the intruder.

Bendy teared up. Who knows but he almost reported his own creator? “No, but I heard the shot. It wasn’t obvious against the music, but-”

Once he stopped crying, he told security what he was willing to.

Henry and Cat were with them at that point, and Bendy used Cat as a life-sized teddy bear.

Even Cat doesn’t have any self-aggrandizing accounts at this point – she admitted that she didn’t know what to do, so she just hugged Bendy back – but she may have left out that she was trembling too.

Henry could see how scared they were. He reached out, but Bendy stiffened the moment he put his hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t wanna be Detooned!”

Henry was biting his lip, and security assumed it was out of worry for his Toon. They told him that they would initiate a lock down and perform a thorough search of the premises.

In the brief moments that the humans were talking, Bendy pulled Cat to the other side of the room and had them both hide under the cloth-laden refreshment table. As the two were clinging to each other, Cat whispered in Bendy’s horn, asking if he thought the Detooner was still in the safe house with them.

He didn’t tell her who it was, but what could Bendy honestly say but yes?

There had to be a lot of love and a degree of trust he still had for Henry, being that he was willing to hear him out later and all, but Bendy was shaking badly. He was biting down on both gloves, but his teeth were still chattering.

In his mind, he was trying to picture himself as a demon. A real one.

But who knows the details of what he pictured?

Maybe he was a horned beast with fur and scales. Maybe he was picturing Cat with glowing red eyes and a deep, layered voice. Or maybe he was a solid shadow, sliding across walls, hiding in the corners, and lying in wait to devour everyone who came across him.

He shuddered.

Cat pulled him closer. “If a Detooner comes lumberin’ over to us, do ye want me to cover you, matey?”

Bendy accepted right away.

Cat knew he was scared, but she wasn’t expecting him to be so eager for her to take his place. He knew it meant she’d get shot, right? She called him a cowardly scumbag, and almost missed the quiet words that came out of his mouth next:

“I’m a monster, ain’t I? I can’t promise nothin’ if I get turned real, but if it has ta be the other way around, I’ll still be your friend.”

He curled in on himself, knees up past his face, likely trying to hide his sniffles and tears.

That shut Cat up. She took it on herself to peek under the tablecloth for any possible Detooners coming their way.

What she saw was Henry guarding a door.

Ducking back under the table, she grinned at Bendy. “No trouble. The barnacle will have to get through yer maker before getting either of us!”

Bendy didn’t hear her: his mind was too full between his shock, his worry, and his memory of the day Boris got detooned.

  


When security finished searching for the intruder, they released the Toons from lock-down with a warning not to wander off alone.

Henry went to look for Bendy, but he couldn’t find him anywhere – not in his room, not in the ballroom, not out interacting with the other Toons.

Bendy was sneaking into a staff area – the room where the guards could check the security tapes – and he had the remnants of the punch with him. He dumped the cold, sticky mess on the guards, and it dripped into the footage too.

He giggled and ran off.

The guards couldn’t catch him, so they told Henry about his behavior.

Henry followed their directions to look for Bendy in the library.

Somehow, Bendy had climbed all the way to the chandelier, where he had a stack of paper sitting with him – copies of the local paper. He folded a page into a paper airplane and threw it at Henry.

If there was one person who hadn’t been a target of Bendy’s before, it was Henry. He’d been worried when Bendy tensed up around him in the ballroom, but he said that’s when he knew for sure that Bendy had caught him.

With a sigh, he bent over to pick the airplane up.

Another one hit his hindquarters. It flopped to the ground, and he scooped both planes up.

He stood up just in time to find another plane flying at his nose. It hit.

“You’ve got a really good aim, bud.”

Bendy folded a paper hat and set it on one horn. “You can’t hit me back without sending the chandelier crashin’ down on ya!”

“Can we talk?”

Bendy blew a raspberry and set the rest of the newspaper hurtling at Henry’s head. He skedaddled while they obscured Henry’s vision.

Pranks continued the rest of the day, and they targeted everyone except Cat.

Henry was Bendy’s new favorite target. By the end of the day, he was covered in fine itching powder, exploded stink bombs, and something pink that stained his hair.

The pranks didn’t lighten up the next day either. Random Toons and guards got love letters from supposed crushes. Henry had his underpants strung up on display from high ceilings. Archie had excerpts from his journal broadcast through the safe house.

Cat was left by her lonesome while Henry cleaned up after Bendy, and she was the only one available to listen to Archie when he explained that security had finished their investigation. They didn’t know who did it, but they know there was no break-in.

Archie told her to get all the Toons to pack up – he and his parents had had to contact the Warner Bros and PirateTime Studios and get the Toons flights back to where they came from.

By Sunday morning, everyone had heard except Bendy. No one could keep up with him long enough to tell him anything.

The only one who had a chance at that was Cat, so Henry approached her to relay the message to Bendy that they were flying back here first thing the next morning. He also sent a warning intended to bait Bendy to him – that the bathrooms were flooded, and a prank there would not be funny in the slightest.

It worked.

Henry took his pen gun and his canister of detooning powder with him to the bathroom, and Bendy was there, waiting to squirt him with maple syrup – he could see him with it hidden behind the trash can.

He pretended he couldn’t. He walked to the toilet and took out the pen gun and the powder.

Bendy squeaked.

Henry ignored him. He uncapped the powder, dumped it in the toilet, twirled the pen gun, opened it and shook its empty barrel over the bowl. Then he flushed. Once he’d put his weapon back in his pocket, he turned around.

Bendy was staring at him, his open syrup bottle drooping from his hand and dripping onto the tiles.

They had a bit of a talk then. Their conversation might have gone something like this:

Kneeling himself down on the cold floor, Henry smiled at Bendy. “Careful there. I think you meant that to end up in my hair, not on your boots. I’ll hold still.”

The syrup clattered against the floor.

Henry took the chance to swoop Bendy into a hug. “I’ve missed you.”

But Bendy squirmed. “What do you want?”

“I know finding out hasn’t been easy for you.” Henry rubbed Bendy’s head, just as always. “I just wanted a chance to explain myself. Thank you for covering for me.”

Bendy pushed against Henry’s chest. He made threats about future pranks that had Henry chuckling.

“Think we can do any of that against Joey?”

“Stop pretendin’ you’re someone ya ain’t!”

Setting Bendy on the floor, Henry asked, “Don’t you want to know why I did it?”

Bendy dumped the trash out on Henry and tossed the empty can against the wall. It clanged and echoed. “’Cause ya stink like garbage, that’s why!”

Henry waited a moment in case he had more to say. Then he rubbed his cheek. “I love you, Bendy.”

“I HATE YA!”

However the conversation played out, Henry reported that Bendy was very upset at the start. He did a lot of screaming and name-calling, but when Henry got him calm, he listened to him.

He told Bendy about how he selected his victims, and how he always got their consent. He told him about Foxy. He told him Boris’s wish.

And it was strange, wasn’t it? Boris was always hungry, but he didn’t interact with others much once he was brought to life, did he? He didn’t speak to many humans – just his primary creators – and he didn’t even spend that much time with Bendy – preferring to stay and eat like a gluttony gag past the point it was no longer funny.

Henry just wanted to see his creations happy.

When Bendy was still and quiet, Henry invited him to sit in his lap.

Bendy shook his head no. Instead, he kept staring at him.

He never told anyone what was running through his mind.

Is that never not concerning when it’s someone you love? So Henry, for something to do with his nervous hands, grabbed the khaki at his knees as he leaned toward Bendy. “Is it still true you want to be human?”

Bendy stuttered out that he didn’t know.

“Then let’s put it this way: if I had offered you humanity, would you have taken me up on it before Foxy?”

His eyes full of tears, Bendy grabbed his shirt. “Is that what ya think you’re givin’ us? Humanity? Henry, we ain’t human. Pirate Pup, Boris, Foxy, they’re animals. And I’m a demon. So what if _my bestest pal_ and the others are happier? Was that those Toons’ only chance of a good life? They’ve all lost bits of themselves they’ll never get back. Don’cha dare change me inta somethin’ I’m not.”

They argued.

Henry skirted around his deeper issues with the Toons staying Toons, but it’s not like Bendy didn’t have a clue about them anyway.

They didn’t see eye-to-eye, but Henry promised never to turn a Toon real again without talking to Bendy first. He assured Bendy that he and Cat were safe from losing their ink at his hands.

He’d meant to persuade Bendy of the “merits” of detooning later, but at that time, he was after a peace of knowledge that Bendy wouldn’t change his mind about turning him in.

He got that, but he traded that worry for troubledness about what Bendy said to him. He overslept the next morning and almost made the two of them late for their flight.

But they made it. Henry ran, Bendy under his arm, duffle-bags strapped to his side. He ran all the way through the Lakefront Airport and reached the plane just as the staff was closing its doors. They opened them again just for him and Bendy.

He set Bendy down for them to reach their seats and for him to wrestle their luggage into the last of the compartment space.

The flight was probably more uncomfortable for him than it was for Bendy – sure Bendy noticed the looks he was getting this time, but he’s the one who smiled at the traveling businessman in the seat next to him and struck up a conversation. Never mind that the man started off in his seat as far as he could get from Bendy.

The reason? Of all the things Bendy could have talked about, it was religion. He was far too young to have heard that you don’t talk about that or politics.

Bendy did send more than a few looks Henry’s way.

Henry pretended to look out the window until he couldn’t take the looks anymore. “I’m alright. Just wondering if I’m a good father to you.”

He didn’t like hearing that Bendy felt more at peace after those prayers of his. It’s not that he wasn’t happy for him, it’s that if God approved of Bendy, Henry had to be wrong. And if he was wrong, well….

What parent would want to feel responsible for their child’s death by actively incurring a deity's wrath?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> An alternate route.
> 
> Question of the week:
> 
> How close are Henry and Bendy after this?


	11. In Which Valentines Show Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> When Henry shoots Foxy, Bendy finds out that he’s a Detooner. Bendy goes on a prank streak until the night before everyone returns home, when Henry tricks him into having a talk. The two work out a deal about Henry’s Detooning (Bendy’s silence for Henry’s running new Detoonings past him), and Bendy calms enough to spend the flight home talking with a total stranger about religion rather than playing pranks on the crew and passengers.

I had Norman go pick Henry and Bendy up, and Boris and I were waiting for them when they came back to the studio. Boris knocked Henry to the ground and cuddled with him. Bendy joined the two of them on the floor, where he wrapped his arms around his best friend with a huge smile.

He said nothing to me.

For a while, I thought everything was fine. If Bendy kept running into my office to hug Boris, he’d just missed him was all. It had nothing to do with the pranks he pulled on Sammy, Grant, and others.

Bendy lived here of course, but Henry spent all day here as well. I made excuses to go visit the art department, and every time I came back to my office, I got out that folder from the PI and added items to a list I was making: _REASONS IT CAN’T BE HENRY_ _._

 

Uncle Joey leans on his desk. “Alice, I ended up adding a lot of things to that list. I crossed most of them off before I started a new list on the back instead: _REASONS TO FORGIVE HENRY._ Do you want me to get it for you?”

She shakes her head.

But are you wondering what’s on the list? Maybe an indicator of if your dad betrayed you? You narrow your eyes. “Why did you?”

“At the time?” he asks. “I was angry at first, but after both Bendy and Boris got detooned, he was the only one of mine left that I could still have a real conversation with. If I didn’t have him, what did I have? And with Bendy still needing him, well…. He’s what did it really.”

You shiver. You squeeze Alice’s hand, and the moment you get her to look up, you nod toward the door.

“Are you leaving?” Uncle Joey must have caught that.

Alice squeezes your hand back. “We’ve got to hear him out. Please stay? I won’t let anything happen to you.”

With how strong Toons are, you don’t have much of a choice, so muttering and making threats, you shift to a more comfortable position. You glare at Uncle Joey. “Hurry up and get to the point, will ya?”

 

Directory Entry 30 – Audio Tape 27. Voice of: Thomas Connor. Subject: Bendy. February 13.

 

Never mind that Henry had flown back that day, he stayed until late Monday evening. Catching up on work, he said.

He was at his desk the rest of the day, burying himself in frames of Bendy and Boris. His pen shook enough that we had to throw half of it away. It’s what happens when you work long hours and still fail to distract yourself from sad memories and empty nurseries at home.

Bendy went to peek at him a few times. But seeing Henry with a pen in his hand after he’d seen the pen gun? It was pretty upsetting.

He ran to the Heavenly Toys Workshop, but Shawn wasn’t there. He ran around looking for Wally, but he wasn’t there either. He ran his bike into the pipes to cause an ink leak and hung around until Tom showed up.

Tom scolded Bendy, but Bendy’s response wasn’t a normal prank. No, it was a halfhearted attempt to draw a beard on Tom that failed when Tom glared at Bendy and the little devil started crying. “I’m sorry. I can’t help but be bad!”

Bendy wrapped himself around Tom’s legs, wiped his eyes, and asked what happened to his other friends. Tom told him the others didn’t work there anymore. He held nothing back about what they’d learned about Boris and warned him to be careful of Henry.

“I know. But he ain't the same as the bad guys in my show, is he? He made me. There’s gotta be a bit of good in there somewhere.”

Or so Tom reported Bendy saying. Bendy denied it when he thought Henry’s job was on the line, but why would he have held something like that back from someone who absolutely knew?

Tom also reported that Bendy no longer felt completely safe being alone with Henry. Apparently, he encouraged Bendy to run to administration and hide with Boris whenever he got spooked, not that it lasted long.

 

“Tuesday morning, Tom delivered his complaint to my office, so Tuesday morning, I complained about his complaint to Henry and dropped the tape off with him. Henry decided he needed to do something, and this was it.” Uncle Joey’s pointing at the next items in the folder: a series of brightly-colored brochures folded in three.

You cross your arms. “And what does this have to do with what you want from me?”

Uncle Joey gawks at you, as if you’d just slapped him. “What does this have to do with what I want for you?” He reaches across the desk, but you pull away. “Bendy is a foundation of this studio, and Bendy is so, so important to your own life story. Even if you don’t inherit a thing, do you think I can let you go without knowing the rest of your life?”

Can you believe this guy?

Alice hugs you. “He’s scared. Can you blame him? All the two of us know is there’s a demon somewhere in this studio, and we don’t know what it wants with him. You’ve got to say something to calm him down.”

“I see.” Uncle Joey’s voice is quiet. He shuffles through the documents and tugs out the corner of a stapled packet, which remains buried under several more papers. “These are the legal proceedings of _California v. Bell_ , which, although it wasn’t what got Toons their legal status as persons, did sway public thought on the matter. It’s especially interesting in regards to Bendy, but I thought you’d rather understand everything that led to the outcomes rather than try to read all the legalese in here.”

Is there any life for you in which that last assumption would not be true? Does it even matter since Uncle Joey hasn’t addressed your concerns? “What does Bendy want from me?”

He meets your eyes. “I’m not the best person to answer that because I’m not entirely sure what’s most important to him in life, but I can tell you that he was rendered completely harmless after the haunting. He’s not especially a threat to anyone.”

Does the doll make him harmless? It’s limp on the desk in the same place you left it.

You take your eyes from the plush lying on your uncle’s desk up to your uncle himself. “And what do you want me to do for Bendy?”

“Can I finish the story?”

Is it hopeless to get more out of Uncle Joey without letting him finish? Do you ask anything? How easy is it for you to agree and listen?

 

Document 36 - “THE SALVATION OF TOONS.” It calls for funds to offer animation companies a deal – better security measures for stopping the pressure they put on politicians to redefine all copyright as a basic right to corporate privacy. The author is listed only as the Detooner’s old organizational name.

Document 37 – a flier of the same name, calling for charitable donations to aid Toons. The author is listed as Joey Drew Studios.

 

Henry got busy on that flier with the studio’s name on it right away. He had a copy to editing by noon.

He said he still wanted to “save” Toons by making them real at that point, but he wanted to be able to do something for those Toons for whom it wasn’t an option either. He asked to leave the studio to go set up the charity branch of Joey Drew Studios and got permission easily.

While he was out and about, he visited Shawn at his new job in a little toy shop, and he also took a note to PirateTime Studios for Cat – one with a phone number for her to reach Bendy. He was allowed to give it to her in person, and he caught a glimpse of PirateTime Studio’s new janitor: Bill Bell.

While he was having a crisis about whether to risk having to reveal himself to warn PirateTime Studios, there was a struggling family out in the community, whose lives were about to take a turn for the worse.

 

Uncle Joey pauses. “What do you know about your birth family?”

California’s adoption records have been sealed since 1935, but you know quite a bit. Your parents knew your birth mother and were able to tell you about her, and your birth mother, Emma Cox, left you a letter with things she wanted you to know: she wants you to think of her as "Auntie" as you live your life with the Steins, and that the Steins are good people who made her comfortable as she was dying of illness. She wants you to be happy with them.

You share just a bit about Auntie and the Coxes.

Uncle Joey nods. “Your parents hadn’t met your mother yet on February the 13th, but I met your father briefly. I can’t say I remember him well, but when Henry showed me your tiny little body and told me where you’d come from, I’d seen him recently enough to tell that you’d gotten his dark hair and tiny nose.”

 

Kenny Cox had been out of work for four months. He was actively looking, but times were tough. He tried business after business, and he went to his church to ask the priests if they’d heard of any leads.

The Coxes were in the same congregation as Shawn Flynn, though they didn’t know each other well. However, Father Black knew from Shawn that Joey Drew Studios had a few openings.

They’d been filled, unfortunately, so there was nothing for Kenny when he came looking. He tried a few more perspective employers, and then he never went home.

His wife worried up all night. She woke up in tears the next morning, still alone, so she left a note in case Kenny came back and coughed her way down the block to the church.

And at the church, Shawn had dropped by before work talk to Father Black when they all saw each other.

 

Document 38 – a red Valentine with Bendy’s name on it. There are strips where the paper’s thinner, as though it once had tape attached. The back has a note declaring Henry’s love for his Toon that ends in a post-script: _I’ve made arrangements for you to go to Shawn’s church with him on Sunday. I hope it can be th_ _e_ _alternate route_ _to happiness_ _that_ _you wanted._

Document 39 – a folded piece of printer paper with a big black heart on the front. A message is sprawled on the inside that addresses your uncle. It's signed by Bendy.

Document 40 – a comic strip that shows Bendy finding a bunch of candy. Boris shows up and steals it all, but he drops one piece, which Bendy eats. It finishes with the message _Happy Valentine’s Day, Bendy!_

 

Henry must have given Bendy his card sometime that same morning, because Bendy came into my office with it just before lunch, chocolate smeared across his face. He also had a last-minute card and a piece of rope under his other arm. “Joey!”

He ran for my lap and climbed up. He grabbed me in a big hug, which I wasn’t used to, coming from him. Or from anyone really. He pressed his cold ink against my chest. His cheek left a sugary brown stain on my white shirt.

“Bendy? What are you doing down here?”

He’d stopped coming to my office some time ago – since just a few weeks after he and Boris came to life, when he stopped with the complaint that I was always too busy for him.

Maybe I was.

But with one Toon so recently detooned, who was I to waste a chance to be with Bendy? I put a hand on his back.

He pressed his horn against my chest, its tip rubbing against my shirt.

Lucky it was soft.

“I love you, Joey,” he said.

I’d forgotten about Valentine’s Day, so it took me a moment to catch onto why he was acting that way. When I did, I smiled. “Someone show you what it’s about?”

Grinning, he sat up and presented me with my card.

He gave Boris his present, and he and I talked for a bit: he  how much he loved me, getting a call from Cat, and being excited to go outside the studio and see a church; and I about my hopes and dreams for him. And then he asked for help: he hadn’t made a card for Henry yet, and he wanted it to be perfect.

So I helped him. I folded the paper neatly and drew the Toons on its front. I asked Bendy what it should say on the inside, but that was the trouble – he skitted around everything he learned in Louisiana, but he said he needed the card to be perfect. It took a while to get something he was happy with.

I don’t remember what I wrote for him, but I remember the hug he gave me when I was done. He drew some hearts on the inside and ran off to give it to Henry. I took the time to draw Bendy a Valentine’s Day gift of his own, oblivious to what was going on in the Art Department.

Knowing now, I could only approve – healing. It wasn’t what changed Henry's mind about Detooning, not on its own, but that silly little Valentine’s card touched him enough that when I was asking him all my questions about how _he_ of all people could be a Detooner and why a Detooner would change his mind to protect Bendy and Cat, he mentioned the card and said he thought maybe he could be forgiven if he just kept helping Toons like our precious little demon – with the charity money he was collecting, that is.

 

Just two more days – the Thursday on which you were born and one otherwise normal Friday – and the peace would break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> An ocean of fear.
> 
> Question of the week:
> 
> What’s the best gift you gave as a kid?


	12. In Which Your Humanity is Proven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> With Henry and Bendy back in Sillyvision and Bendy avoiding Henry, Joey continues to bury his head in the sand about who shot Boris. But Henry is trying to make things up to Bendy, so he starts a charity for Toons and makes arrangements for Bendy to go to church with Shawn Flynn.
> 
> In the present, you’re still antsy about why you’re being told about Bendy, and your uncle assures you that Bendy was made harmless. You discuss your birth family.

You narrow your eyes. “Wait a minute. That would have me born on February the 15 th , wouldn’t it? Just ‘cause that’s the day my Amended Birth Certificate says I was born doesn’t mean that’s the day I was born. I’ve heard those things lie all the time.”

Uncle Joey reaches for the folder. The top document is a newspaper, then those legal proceedings, and the next is a manila envelope. He pulls it out. “Just because California insists on using Amended Birth Certificates for adoptees doesn’t mean that your birth mother didn’t have your Original Birth Certificate. She gave it to your parents before the records were even sealed – and thank goodness! With the stuff that happened, Detooners started coming to sniff around here. Bill Bell told them things from prison, and they had a hard time believing us when we told them your name is Ken and you were born to a poor family downtown, so the things in this packet were a life-saver.”

 

Document 43 – a packet of documents that pertain to you.

Document 43a – an Original Birth Certificate for a baby Cox with parents Kenneth and Emma Cox, born locally on February 15, 1934.

Document 43b – a baptismal certificate for Bendy Kenneth Cox, issued March 3, 1934.

Document 43c – a copy of a photo your parents have, in which your parents are standing behind a dark, flower-pattered armchair where Auntie is sitting and holding you in her arms.

Document 43d – a letter in Auntie’s handwriting, explaining that she’s leaving you in care of Linda Stein until either your birth father can be found or he’s been missing long enough that her church will finalize your adoption without his consent.

Document 43e – a copy of your adoption certificate. It gives your legal name as Bendy Kenneth Cox-Stein and your parents as Henry and Linda Stein. Issued February 15, 1935.

 

You lift up your Original Birth Certificate and your baptism certificate and angle them toward Alice, wide-eyed.

She’s mouthing an _oh_. “You’re that little baby everyone was cooing over.”

Are you the type to redden easily, or is the heat in your cheeks something else?

Alice smiles. “I got to see you once, but I was still figuring out how to adjust my Toonness for the real world, so I couldn’t be gentle enough to be allowed to hold you. I did pray for you. I heard you’d been sick and your mother was still very ill. I never heard that you were the same baby Henry adopted. You were here just that one time, you know?”

You set the certificates down and ask the first thing that comes to mind to change the subject: “If I was baptized Bendy Kenneth Cox, did that mean Auntie chose my name? I can understand Dad namin’ me after his lost Toon, even if he did turn evil and all, but why would _Auntie_ name me after Dad’s lost Toon?”

Uncle Joey shakes his head. “She didn’t want to name you at all. When you were born, the only reason anyone knew you were alive is that you were breathing. You didn’t fuss. You didn’t move. You’d barely even eat if she fed you. You just lay there with your eyes closed all day. She thought she’d have to bury another child, so after everything happened, she let your parents name you. But come to think of it, I don’t think she would have wanted you to have any other name.”

What was that supposed to mean? Did Bendy save your life or something? But how could he? He was a Toon, not a miracle worker. No. Then maybe he had something to do with your parents adopting you?

Your uncle should have just told you that from the start.

 

Friday evening, I had no idea of the plot Bill Bell had just a few blocks away. All I was concerned with was getting Joey Drew Studios locked up for the weekend.

We’ve redone the entrance since, but back then, it was a narrow hall that emptied into a room with spinning film reels on one wall that ground together loud enough that I couldn’t hear hints of a conversation until I reached that room and saw Henry kneeling in front of Bendy, who had a bag next to him and that plush of his held tight in his arms, and was looking up at Norman Polk instead of Henry.

I came closer. “Is everything alright here?”

Bendy grinned, but he pulled his toy closer to his chest, and it squeaked loudly. “It’s fine. Just a big weekend is all.”

Nodding toward Bendy’s bag, I looked at Henry for an answer.

“There’s somewhere he wants to go. I promise he’ll be safe.”

Or so Henry said. If I weren’t so determined that he was innocent, I would have been concerned. As it was, I was pushing aside my inkling that something was actually very wrong with Bendy and Henry. “Oh, fun plans?”

“Mister Drew, if you’re concerned about Bendy’s safety, you’re the one who should be taking him to church yourself.” Norman put a hand on Bendy’s back and pushed him toward me.

The Toon closed his eyes. “I’ll be fine, won’t I?”

“Of course you will.” Henry pulled him to his chest, where Bendy shivered and sobbed.

It made my heart pound a bit, to be honest. “You’re sure everything’s alright?”

“It’s not.” If there was one person who could move silently across the creaky old floorboards, it was Norman, and he did so. “I know what you don’t want to hear, so I’ll tell you this instead – you need to spend more time with your Toon, starting right now.”

I’m not sure what I’d have said if I’d been allowed to speak – a part of me wanted to stick up for my friend, but the other part of me wanted to ask him a question so I could reassure myself.

But Henry beat me to saying anything. “Spending more time with Bendy is a good idea, actually. Will you give him some one-on-one time Monday morning?”

“Just me and Joey?” Bendy was looking at me, and he’d stopped shivering. How could I say no?

I smiled. “You can count on it. Now go have a fun weekend with Henry, okay?”

Bendy’s lips rose, but they weren’t in that signature grin of his. Furthermore, they kept twitching. “Yeah. A weekend with Henry.”

I almost asked if he would rather spend the weekend with me and Boris, but Henry was putting a hand on Bendy’s horns. “You still scared, buddy? You want me to say another prayer with you?”

“Yes!” Bendy grabbed Henry’s hand and pulled him back toward the Art Department, pausing only to wave to me. “See ya Monday, Joey!”

Norman crossed his arms. “You should at least call him this weekend to see how he’s doing.”

It was the first suggestion of any of my employees’ – other than Henry’s of course – that I took without reservation. I dismissed Norman for the day and returned to my office just to add one item to my list: Henry couldn’t be a Detooner because he prayed with Bendy.

 

Document 41 – a newspaper article about dead animals at PirateTime Studios. Laid out in the snow is a giant squid, its tentacles folded back to fit in the picture, and there’s a second victim there too, almost lost in the white – Pirate Pup.

Document 42 – the court proceedings of California v. Bell. The copy has a few places blacked out, but most of it is as readable as legalese gets.

Directory Entry 31 – Audio Tape 28 – Voice of Cat (guest at Joey Drew Studios). Subject: Friday. February 19.

Directory Entry 32 – Audio Tape 29 – Voice of Diggie Dog (guest at Joey Drew Studios). Subject: Friday. February 19.

Directory Entry 33 – Audio Tape 30 – Voice of Juan Quistador (guest at Joey Drew Studios). Subject: Friday. February 19.

Directory Entry 34 – Audio Tape 31 – Voice of Pearly Princess (guest at Joey Drew Studios). Subject: Friday. February 19.

Directory Entry 35 – Audio Tape 32 – Voice of Private Parakeet (guest at Joey Drew Studios). Subject: Friday. February 19.

 

Work days end late in the animation industry, but who wants to work late Friday night if they can help it? The animators packed up, the writers went home, and the CEO trusted Bill Bell with the task of locking up for the weekend – as soon as he was done cleaning the last of the usually-busy floors.

For once, Bell was left alone with the Toons in PirateTime Studios, and he saw his opportunity. He mopped the animation room, took his mop and bucket back to the closet, and put on a thick glove.

He kept a little stoppered bottle inside that closet, and he must have learned his lesson about acting slowly from Boris because he added it to Pirate Pup’s water bowl all at once. He added the empty bottle to the big trash bag he would take out to the rot-smelling dumpster on the way out and went to an office phone.

Maybe he would have gotten away with acting like a victim forever had it not been for the night he Detooned Bendy because his boss believed him when he said he couldn’t find his keys and thought they might have been stolen sometime during the day. In fact, his boss told him to send the Toons into lock down and call the police right away.

While he was on the phone, Pirate Pup was just two rooms away, lapping up his water, alone.

Most of the Toons were in the break room, playing cards. Other than the puppy, only Cat and Crank the Kraken hadn’t joined in on the fun.

Cat was tucked in a break room nook where she and the other Toons wouldn’t have to see each other, playing cat’s cradle.

Crank was already in the dorms, curled up on his water bed.

Bell headed straight to the break room and delivered the bad news.

Pearly Princess screamed. Juan Quistador and his first mate clung to each other. Cat came out of hiding.

Diggie Dog ran to get her pup, and she was out of the room before anyone could stop her. Cat ran toward the door too, but Bell stopped her. “I’ll get the dogs and the kraken. You ‘uns stay here and make this place secure.”

But he did not go after Diggie. He pretended not to know that Pirate Pup had left his toys in the dorms to get a drink. In the meantime, he readied his pen gun.

Diggie ran around looking for her pup, but by the time she found him, he was laying on his side, limbs splayed, and growing cold. She screamed.

The other Toons abandoned their overturned tables and barricading efforts to check on her. They found her and the corpse.

Cat reported that she walked toward the door, intending to lock them all inside before the Detooner found them there too. Diggie said that they all hid behind the room’s vending machines, keeping everyone from Pearly Princess to Cat Earrin’ safe. Everyone else said that Cat yowled, covered her ears, and ran out shouting that they all needed to hide, so they grabbed the coward and threw her out as a distraction for the culprit while they built a make-shift fort for themselves.

After Cat ended up locked out of the room, she ran and hid in the janitor’s closet, where she fell into the trash bag. She came up covered in a pizza stench the others would comment on, and she knocked out that bottle in her escape from the bag.

She picked it up and read the label. She zipped back to the room, but the other Toons wouldn’t let her in.

At the time, they accused her of poisoning the puppy.

But then… BANG!

Cat banged on the door. “Help! Crank’s not landlubber enough to live without water, is he?”

If there’s one thing Cat could say that the others couldn’t deny, it was that. They all split up, zipping through the halls, to get buckets and bowls and paper cups from which to get water from the bathroom to the latest fallen Toon.

They ran Bell over in their haste, but they couldn’t get Crank enough to survive.

Pearly Princess started bawling, and everyone else jumped when Bell got to his feet.

He backed out, and just as would be expected from an innocent person said, “I don’t think the Detooner’s fool enough to stick around here, but you ‘uns be careful. No more deaths tonight. I’ve gotta call the cops!”

Cat sunk to her knees, staring at the big, tentacled corpse. She was out in the halls alone. It could have been her turned real. She didn’t know what else the Detooner might have done to her, but at least she could survive on land. The other Toons wouldn’t have been able to blame her if she were the victim anyway.

There was a din in the dorms as various Toons wailed and accusations went flying, but Cat was silent. Eventually, she got to her feet. “The cops will be here soon. I’ll be a-talkin’ to them.”

She went to the front room to wait, and there she discovered Bell’s keys, dropped in front of the door, with a belt clip that read _PirateTime Studios._ She contaminated the evidence by picking it up, but it’s not like she knew a thing about fingerprints or how not to smear them.

Bell likely hadn’t left anything anyway.

But speaking of Bell, Cat had a thought: how could Bell’s keys just get stolen if they were clipped to his belt?

At the very least, it was negligent, but the court spent only a minute on that possibility.

Soon, Cat saw Bell, who was also coming to wait for the cops.

She ran off so he wouldn’t spot her. She made her way down to the offices, picked up the phone, and called the CEO herself. To him she reported the same thing Bell had minutes before – that Pirate Pup and Crank the Kraken were dead.

He asked if she was alright.

She was, and she felt a lot better when he told her that he was on his way out the door to return to the studio himself. While she was waiting for him, she went back to the dorms and suggested to the other Toons that they couldn’t count on the humans to protect them – that they out to take turns keeping lookout themselves.

They listened. Sort of. Juan Quistador pretended the whole thing was his idea and set the rotations up right away.

They excluded Cat, seeing as how the other Toons still saw her as an enemy. They later reported that her tail was curled up on herself and she kept to herself after that.

Cat herself said she didn’t mind so long as she knew she still had a friend in a nearby studio. When the CEO did come, she asked to use the phone so she could warn her friend the Detooners were killing people now. She spent hours trying to contact the empty Joey Drew Studios.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> A weekend with Henry.
> 
> Question of the week:
> 
> Is a church really a place for a cartoon demon?


	13. In Which Detooners Shout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> You see your Original Birth Certificate for the first time and discuss your name. In the past, Joey Drew Studios prepares for the weekend and PirateTime Studios is attacked.

Document 44 – a hand-made “Get Well Soon” card from Bendy for the Cox family.

Document 45 – a letter to Uncle Joey from Father Black, about Bendy and a religious defense of Toons in general.

 

When Shawn went to pick Bendy up at the Steins on Sunday, Henry was there, copy of that newspaper about PirateTime Studios in hand. He quietly asked if Shawn had heard anything from Bell while he was out East, but the Detooner meetings had all been their usual. So with a hug and a kiss to his forehead, Henry sent Bendy off with Shawn and a bag of things to entertain him when the sermon outlasted his attention span.

Shawn drove him to the church and got them there several minutes early for worship. He watched as Bendy gaped at the rows of dark pews and the tall stained-glass windows, which were glowing in the day’s soft sun.

They were there early enough for Father Black himself to come greet the newest face in the chapel and for other worshipers to respond to Bendy’s presence. Father Black was friendly, and Bendy liked him, but the members of the congregation had mixed attitudes toward the Toon. Some were welcoming, and some didn’t take to kindly to the presence of even a cartoon demon.

Father Black almost had to shout over the congregation to start the meeting off, asking them to notice those who were not there and pray on their behalf; and on the pew, Shawn had to distract Bendy from making rude drawings of those mocking him by pointing out the absence of the Cox family – he told Bendy that they were sick and might have a new little baby.

Bendy made a get-well card for the family, but he pouted the moment Shawn said he couldn’t go back to making rude drawings afterward.

It couldn’t have helped that the noise in the church was only getting worse the longer Bendy stayed.

In fact, Father Black had the nearest the church had ever come to a riot on his hands. He took his Bible, walked to the alter, and thumped it down in front of the microphone.

The crowd quieted. Most of them had turned toward him in time to see him ripping up the notes he’d made for his sermon on the parable of the ten virgins.

Bendy leaned toward Shawn. “Is that guy supposed to do that?”

Shawn told him just to listen.

Bendy did.

Father Black was changing his sermon last minute, switching to humanity’s relationship with God for Bendy’s sake. Specifically, he wanted to point out the parallels between humanity’s relationship with God and the Toons’ relationships with both humans and God. And if the fold didn’t understand? Well, he committed to speaking with any animation executive who’d listen about how to boost Toons’ reputation too!

The fold didn’t understand. They argued and bickered over the details in Father Black’s presentation. Each of them had their own take on the matter.

Even Bendy had his own – but he got something special from it. Oddly enough, Bendy was one of the stillest beings in the pew, so he had trouble getting Shawn’s attention when he tried to ask the questions: “Is that gettin’ better really a human thing? And do ya all get ta go live with your Creator forever if you’re good?”

There was a look on Bendy’s face stayed there for the rest of the service – one that Father Black emphasized in his letters. Bendy’s brow was high, his mouth became a little line, and his eyes – his eyes were big, black, and reflecting that light from the windows. It was the answer Shawn gave to his questions that had him like that, and it kept him quiet the rest of the meeting.

And when he got back to the Steins, he mentioned something about it to Henry, though he immediately backtracked to say that he was okay with joining Sammy’s band instead.

Henry blinked. “The band?”

“Yeah. Father Black called me a cymbal.”

Given the nature of religious discourse, Henry knew what that meant. “What exactly did he say you’re a symbol of?”

“People.” Bendy grabbed Henry’s sleeve and pulled until he got down on his level. “Do I get ta do it too? The bein’ a better person and the livin’ with ya forever, I mean.” His head drooped toward the Stein’s red-and-white rug. “I’m okay with not bein’ a human like the rest of ya if I get ta do it too.”

His voice was strained, and Henry didn’t believe he was okay with not getting to be human, so he started rubbing Bendy’s horns. “Bendy, if you’re a symbol for people, do you think you’d be human if you ever did get Detooned?”

Bendy extracted himself from Henry’s comfort and backed away. His pie-cut eyes looked around, as though he were trying to spot Linda.

Henry held up his hands. “Hey, no pen gun! Besides, I promised you I’d run any new Detoonings by you, didn’t I? I won’t shoot you unless you tell me I can.”

“I might wanna be human, but I ain’t willin’ ta risk turnin’ inta a monster!”

Henry pulled Bendy to himself in a little hug and held him there for a minute, where every little quake of the demon’s turned into the rough waves of guilt in his thinking of PirateTime Studios and how he might have saved some lives if he’d spoken up about Bell.

Anyway, when Henry got up the guts, he said, “I know you don’t, but you might be taking a risk staying a Toon. There’s something I have to show you. _I_ didn’t do it.” At that point, he brought Bendy to the coffee table and showed him the headlines.

Bendy’s eyes widened. He held the paper up in front of his face. He read the article. He reread the article. Finally, he lowered it. “It doesn’t say anythin’ about Cat!”

“It would have mentioned if she’d gotten hurt. Do you want to call her later?”

Bendy nodded, and Henry pulled him to him. “Anyway, as I was saying, there’s another Detooner running around, and he’s killing his victims. I think I know who it is, and he has no qualms about turning you into a real demon.”

“Are ya gonna stop him?”

“I’m going to do my best, but I’m worried about you anyway. If he turns you and it’s possible for him to kill you, he will.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his gun and canister. “It may be your best chance of staying safe if we can get you established as a human before he comes after you – at least the law will be a deterrent to killing you.”

He set his weapon on the table and waited for Bendy’s response.

Bendy was standing there, jaw parted. He kept looking between Henry, the pen gun, and his plushy. Finally, he shook his head. “I’d rather die as a human than live as a demon. Don’cha dare risk anythin’ by Detoonin’ me.”

Henry wasn’t happy to hear it, but he put the pen gun away. He took Bendy to the phone and let him call Cat.

Over at PirateTime Studios, Cat was surprised to hear that Bendy was calling her, but how would that stop her from running to the phone? The two of them chattered on for hours.

 

Bendy must have really been shaken up about the whole thing, and enough so that, Monday morning, when he came to my office, he climbed up on my lap and asked me if there was anything we could do for the PirateTime Toons. I wrapped my arms around his cold ink and pulled his head closer to mine. “I’ve got an idea, but how is Henry doing? Did he tell you about his new charity?”

He hadn’t yet, so I told Bendy about the money Henry was collecting, and how of course the security measures would help our rivals out as well. We didn’t have enough to upgrade anything for anyone yet, but you should have seen Bendy’s smile – not his grin, but a big smile with sparkling eyes. It warmed me up inside.

I spent the rest of our one-on-one time telling him stories, and making him laugh his fantastic semi-rhythmic wheeze – or at least getting him to call me out on how ridiculous some of my tales are. When it was over, I called PirateTime’s CEO directly – if we didn’t have the money to protect our Toons better in our own studios, we could at least pool our resources, gather the Toons in one place to make them easier to guard and all that. And since the PirateTime Toons had too many bitter memories at their studio recently, they were coming to mine.

I was there to see it – Bendy and Cat’s reunion. The one they had on the phone? Probably nothing compared to their running toward each other, crying. Wrapping their rubber-hose arms around each other. Not that I think either would admit to it.

 

Document 46 – a Detooner pamphlet that talks about demons. It contains a story that claims that pen guns were a gift from angels.

Document 47 – a copy of the _New York Times_ with the headline _CRAZED CARTOON KILLED THREE_. It mentions two dead children and one dead woman, all by the name of Bell. May 28, 1933.

Directory Entry 36 – _Toons, Demons, and America’s Families_ – Bill Bell’s autobiography, published from prison. There’s a handwritten note from Uncle Joey that only Chapters 2 and 3 are worth your time to read.

 

That night was one of the last Detooner meetings in this city for a while. Public, of course. Stuffed into a little room in the town hall – one that I’ve been too. It’s got a heater that’s constantly breaking and these stiff chairs worse than the ones in my studio.

 

Uncle Joey pauses and asks a question, “Have you ever heard anyone say that a demon is nothing but a fallen angel?”

You answer, but he doesn’t stay on it long. He just acknowledges it with a little nod and points to something in the pamphlet.

His finger rests on a bolded paragraph that’s making the claim about pen guns coming from angels. “If you believe that a demon is a fallen angel, then this explanation’s as good as any about how the Detooners got those things in the first place. Except obviously, it’s propaganda.”

 

Apparently, the pamphlet was new that night, and Henry had to compete with it to get attention for his fliers with the financial support for animation studios who want to better lock down their Toons.

If you only know the names of three Detooners, one guess will give you who the author of the new pamphlet was. Or the name of one of the authors at least – Bell co-wrote it with friends from back East, and he wanted to get it circulating before they came for a visit out here. Them, and a bunch of their pen guns with them.

The pamphlet was new, but the idea wasn’t – where else would Henry have gotten those warped ideas about salvation but from Bell?

At least, before Crank and Pirate Pup.

He didn’t know for sure of course, but he and Shawn were sitting together that meeting, quietly bouncing ideas off each other of who else would have done anything to PirateTime Studios Friday night.

They came up blank. And so they agreed – they needed to bring the meeting around to Henry’s agenda.

Shawn did so by announcing that he’d taken a certain little devil to church with him, and Father Black had asked them to have more charity for the Toons. With the varied group that was the Detooners in the room with them, some nodded along, others shook their heads, and a few rolled their eyes altogether at all the religious folk.

“Tell ‘em, Henry.”

Henry stood up, fully aware that every eye in the room was on him. “It’s true.” He reported on Bendy’s religiosity.

And Bell? Bell shook his head. “Bendy is a demon. Of course he’s going to deceive you two! Even the devil himself can appear like an angel.” He slipped out into the aisle, giving Henry a look that stopped his heart for a moment – one that he interpreted something like pity. “Didn’t you lose your son over him? Isn’t that proof enough? He might appear harmless now, but he’s not. You have got to reveal his true colors. You owe it to Stuart.”

It hit enough a nerve to shut Henry up. After all, just because Shawn’s church had an opinion on Toons didn’t mean all the churches did, so a lot of folks were left to follow the ideas of whoever could be most persuasive to them. And although he’d found Bell’s willingness to Detoon the more dangerous of Toons troublesome at times didn’t mean that Bell hadn’t brought him around to his ideas of where Toons sprang from.

He sat down. Harmless? Harmful? He knew which he wanted to believe about Bendy, but he had enough lingering doubt that he couldn’t argue with Bell.

Shawn could. Who was Bell to tell them that his religious beliefs were wrong anyway? He squeezed Henry’s shoulder as he chewed Bell out.

And when he was done with that, he leaned close enough to Henry’s ear that he tickled it with his warm breath. “Isn’t Bendy your child too?”

That was the one thing Henry was certain of, so he got back up. “That’s enough. As a Toon, Bendy is like a child. I designed him to fill in for one, so perhaps there’s a part of him that’s human underneath all that ink. But if you shoot him, who knows what will happen? Do any of you want a demon running loose?”

Who would want that? The room started murmuring, and Bell thought it was time to play his ace – he shared his sob story, and then, “I begged heaven for justice, and an angel appeared to me – and I _know_ it was an angel because I’d been praying. You know what the angel told me? He told me that demons came here disguised as Toons to gain our trust, but there would be a way given that we can get rid of that so-called ink of theirs. How does taking away a disguise from a demon create a new demon? You ‘uns have all got to open your eyes and see what we’re really dealing with.”

As sad as Bell’s supposed story was, it ended when Henry and Shawn got into a shouting match with him, and the rest of the Detooners had to keep them split up. Even still, Bell was calling out, “You think you’re so brave? You think you can keep that little devil of yours playing tame forever? Wake up, Stein. That’s not the nature of the beast.”

The words worried everybody, really – enough that many of the Detooners donated to Henry’s Toon security fund. Enough that Bell must have thought it would be uncertain if it was him who broke into Joey Drew Studios or him who inspired someone else to break into Joey Drew Studios if anything were to happen to Henry’s creations.

Henry went home quaking that night, and came straight to work the next morning with the money, where he volunteered to spend Monday and Tuesday improving security and to be a regular guard for all the Toons.

He was put straight into the position. In fact, he was one of two guards on duty the Thursday night Bendy was shot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question of the week:
> 
> With all the research he’s so clearly done, shouldn’t Joey write a book too?
> 
> Next time:
> 
> Bendy’s last night.


	14. In Which Copyrights are by Year

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> After Bendy goes to church with Shawn, he returns to the Steins knowing that he still wishes to be human, but he turns down Henry’s offer to Detoon him anyway – even though it means taking the risk that Bill Bell will Detoon him instead.
> 
> Henry and Shawn get into an argument with Bell during a Detooner meeting, and afterwards, Henry volunteers to guard all the Toons who came to Joey Drew Studios.

Document 48 – a guard schedule for Joey Drew Studios, week of Monday, February 19, 1934 to Friday, February 23, 1934.

  
  


It wasn’t exactly a secret that we were upping our security measures – it would be hard to hide the more numerous security cameras and the empty security camera covers meant to scare intruders anyway. And the doors and the windows wired up to set up an alarm if opened after hours? I had people in my office to ask if they needed a door code.

And I had some more concerned employees paying me visits too – Tom trying to convince me to reset the code so Henry wouldn’t have it and Norman asking if Henry and I needed more assistance with night time security.

I would have told them both to buzz off – I did, in fact – but Henry said he could use more help watching the Toons at night. He convinced me to offer all the concerned workers overtime pay for night shifts.

I did so on the condition that if anyone mentioned their “crazy” theory that Henry was a Detooner, they’d be banned from my studio altogether. Still, Tom took me up on that. So did Norman. Even Sammy said he could take a shift once a month or so because he could use the extra money. I wrote up a schedule and had copies delivered to all the guards.

  
  


Wednesday night, it was Henry and Tom. They had a cot set up on the ground floor, on which they would take turns sleeping when not on watch.

Tom put the cot inside a closet and barricaded Henry in. He himself pulled an all nighter, during which he sat by the front door and warned the Toons to stay away from the studio entrances and Henry’s closet.

He was too tired to do his job for Gent the next day, and Henry complained that Tom went a little too far protecting the Toons – he suggested I pay Tom to maintain the security equipment instead.

I adjusted the schedule so it would be Henry and Norman on duty Thursday night.

  
  


After Henry complained about Tom, he spent the morning checking on the Toons.

Pearly Princess and Diggie Dog had locked themselves in the safe house, and Henry could hardly convince them to let him in to double-check the security. Juan Quistador and Private Parakeet had gotten outside, where they were mapping out all the trees and bushes in which a baddie could hide, and Henry had to chase them back inside.

Bendy and Cat? Henry found them in the Heavenly Toys workshop, where Bendy was trying to cheer Cat up by demonstrating a toy train.

Cat was more interested in the new kaleidoscopes stored up on the top shelves – they looked like the spy glasses that could let you see an enemy from a mile away. “Don’t yer get it, matey? None of the barnacles care about us, so we be on our own!”

“That ain’t true! There’s Tom and Norman and-and I think I could talk one of the Detooners down, okay?”

Cat’s eyes were wide while she was trying to figure out what Bendy – what _Bendy,_ the Toon so terrified of becoming a monster – meant about talking down the Detooners.

Henry took that opportunity to end their conversation by putting a hand on Bendy’s shoulder and speaking to Cat. “I’m sorry to hear you’re not satisfied with the security arrangements. If you don’t mind, I have to borrow Bendy for a minute. I’ll talk some sense into him while I’ve got him.”

Cat narrowed her eyes, debating whether to trust even Bendy’s creator with her best friend. In a moment, she nodded and started climbing the shelves to get to the kaleidoscopes.

Henry led Bendy away from her. Away from anyone. He took the two of them into a spare accounting office where Grant filed less sensitive reports sometimes and closed the door. Once there, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his pen gun.

Bendy flinched. “I still don’t wanna be Detooned. ‘Sides, Cat knows I’m with ya, and I don’t want ya gettin’ in trouble.”

But Henry’s response was to smile and snap the pen in half. He handed it to Bendy. “Here. Present for you. I won’t be getting a new one.”

Curling his fingers around the pieces, Bendy asked, “Ya mean it?”

Henry felt he couldn’t meet his Toon’s eyes. It’s not that he wasn’t sincere – it’s that he didn’t know if he could protect Bendy the way a father should, and he certainly couldn’t change his victims back to the Toons they were. Not Foxy. Not Pirate Pup. Not Boris. “Promise me you won’t let Bell catch up with you.”

“I won’t let Tom lock ya in the closet again.” Bendy paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was wavering.

Henry got the impression Bendy was trying to convince himself:

“Ya ain’t a bad guy anymore.”

All Henry could do at that point was watch silently as Bendy hid the fragments in his boot. When he returned to work, his mind was filled with wandering thoughts – worries, mostly, about Bendy – if Bendy believed him, and if he could keep Bendy safe.

Bendy’s day was filled with smiles that dropped when he thought no one was looking and attention that drifted away from Cat as she complained that the kaleidoscopes weren’t spyglasses after all and tried to think up other schemes to keep them safe.

And out in town, Emma barely had the strength to get out of bed. She used what little she had to call Father Black. She would go on to claim that Kenny visited her as an angel and promised her that their son had a shot at a normal healthy life if only he were given to the right family, so her main concern was getting someone to care for her baby when she was gone.

Who was most recently on her mind but the one whose get-well card was still sitting on the kitchen table? It was nonsense to think that Bendy could take care of a baby of course, but not so much to imagine that the couple Shawn told her about when he delivered the card could do it – the couple with a good, steady income and a love of both Toons and children.

She told Father Black that she wanted her son presented to the Steins that same day, so Father Black tended to her. He made some calls to ask Shawn to contact the couple and to find someone who had both a car and an infant of their own, and thus a child seat….

  
  


While Uncle Joey is telling you that the phone calls took several hours, you’re smiling at the thought of Auntie and looking at the next set of entries and documents.

  
  


Directory Entry 37 – a music stand with a bullet hole.

Document 49 – a map of the music department with notes like _the stand was here_ on it.

Document 50 – a small canvas with a realistic pen-and-ink drawing. It has a you: a you of indeterminate age, with perfect skin, perfect hair, and perfect teeth. This you is dressed in a black shirt/pants/vest combo with over-sized boots, a big white bow tie, and white evening gloves that have black ovals on the back. This you is reaching for yourself as an infant. The bottom right corner has a title: _OUR LITTLE DEVIL_ , a signature: _HENRY STEIN_ , and a copyright notice: _©_ _1934._

  
  


The canvas falls from your trembling hands, which you press against Uncle Joey’s desk to hide. “This wasn’t a funny joke when I was a kid, and it’s an absolutely cruel one now! Ya gave me my birth certificate back, and that’s proof enough, isn’t it? I’m human!” You blink water out of your eyes. “I’m willin’ ta believe that I was put in danger as a baby by bein’ sent to the studio the night Bendy was Detooned, but _that ain’t me!_ Ya had Dad draw it later, didn’cha?”

“We thought you might say that.” Uncle Joey’s hand twitches toward the folder, where a 1934 copyright registration for the pen-and-ink drawing is lying, but he stops himself and just looks at you. “I miss you, Bendy. We all do. If it were just that on the line, I’d let you go on believing what you like, but Bell knows who you are.”

“My name is Ken!”

A cold hand touches your back. “Joey, if this is Bendy, then what happened to the baby?”

You shoot Alice a smile you hope conveys your gratitude. And then you jab the drawing. “Yeah. This is two people here. Are ya tryin’ ta tell me I’m possessed or somethin’?”

“Would you ever have guessed you were so sick as a baby you couldn’t move? Why did you think you gained that ability?”

So it is what he’s trying to tell you. It’s not just your hands that are shaking now – it’s all of you, not that you’d know it if it weren’t for Alice’s hand rubbing your shoulder. “I’ll help you with Bendy. I promised.”

It should comfort you, but it doesn’t. You narrow your eyes at your uncle. “Who do ya think you’ve been talkin’ to this whole time – me? Or Bendy?”

“Same person!”

“This ain’t right!”

For several minutes, the office is so quiet that you can hear the buzz of the electricity in the overhead lights. You spend the time staring at your own face drawn on the page, glancing from time to time at the copyright registration certificate.

  
  


Document 51 – the copyright registration certificate for Henry Stein’s _OUR LITTLE DEVIL_. 1934.

  
  


You wipe your eyes.

Alice is still rubbing circles on your back, pressure increasing as she leans into you. Her cold hair is tickling your ear. “You’ll get through this. Deep breaths. Just breathe.”

You do.

When you’ve calmed some, Alice stops rubbing your back to hold your shoulders instead. “Joey, where is Ken?”

“I’m here,” you say. “Could ya help me get Bendy outta me?”

Uncle Joey slaps his desk. “You are Bendy!”

“I ain’t!”

Alice’s hands dig into your shoulders. “I’ve seen your shorts. You act a lot like Bendy.”

Your stomach twists, but you shout at Alice. She backs away from you, eyes constricting to little dots.

Uncle Joey asks her to leave.

“Wait!” You grab her wrist. “I just… It’s that… Do I really act like him?”

She doesn’t answer you, so you look at your uncle instead.

“You’re him. Let Alice go and we can talk.”

And so you drop Alice’s wrist, but you do so to wrap your arms around yourself and stare at the uneven floorboards. “It ain’t right. If I’m Bendy, why don’t I remember any of this?”

“Because it happened before you were a baby.”

You stare at the canvas again. The demon’s hand – _your_ hand – is reaching toward the child’s black hair. What is it you want to do? Do you want to shout some more? Cry? Walk out and pretend you never saw a thing?

What is it that you’ve done?

Slowly, you set your hand on the drawing. “That’s a monster.” And the monster is you.

Uncle Joey clears his throat, and gestures for Alice to come to him. As he whispers something in her ear, you lean forward in hopes of hearing it.

You don’t but you see its effect on Alice – it puts a smile on her face, one that you don’t know how to interpret. Sure, she’s smiling, but not enough for the tears in her eyes.

Uncle Joey notices you trying to eavesdrop and sends a smile of his own your way. “Alice, there should be a group of Toons in the lunch room, getting some comfort food ready. Would you go help them?”

“I-”

“Would ya go ask Cat what’s goin’ on with me? Or with Ken, I guess.” You take your eyes off the image you wish never existed and see Alice blinking at you. “Whatever it is, I wanna make it right. I’ll stay here and see what I can get outta Uncle Joey.”

She smiles. “It will be okay.”

What sort of answer is that?

You’re watching her sashay out of the room when something warm touches your hand – it’s Uncle Joey’s. He’s leaning across his desk to make contact. “You’re concerned about the original Ken Cox-Stein? You really don’t need to be. I wasn’t there, but from the sound of things, I wouldn’t be surprised if the child was something like brain dead, at least from a medical standpoint.”

Is it okay to possess someone who’s brain dead? Or at least, is it better to possess someone who’s brain dead than someone who isn’t? Do you feel any better? You swallow a lump in your throat. “Who am I?”

“I can’t answer that, but I can tell you what happened. I’ll keep calling your past self by name if you need some distance with all this.”

Nodding, you take your seat. You pick up the doll of yourself with one hand and shove the documents folder aside with the other– it’s not like you need any more proof that Uncle Joey’s telling you the facts as well as anyone understands them. Do you even want to look at them?

You squeak the toy. “Why didn’t I possess somethin’ like this instead?”

Uncle Joey tells you it’s fine, but you don’t know if you believe it. He gives you a moment to process what he said before he goes on with your story.

  
  


Bell came to Joey Drew Studios after dark, and when he did so, he did so with the intention to get Bendy specifically.

He’d been planning to wait until his friends got there from the East Coast, but he was angry with Henry about Monday’s Detooner meeting and didn’t want that charity of his to be able to do any more for Toon security than it already had. So as soon as he was cooled down enough that he trusted himself to play things smart, he concocted a plan to reach his target.

He showed up in brown clothing that would have stuck out less against the telephone pole he sabotaged before he even broke onto the premises. In ready reach, he had both his pen gun and a hand gun, both loaded before he strolled down the front walk and disabled the magnetic alarm on the entrance.

Up until he got onto the main staircase indoors, he remained entirely unnoticed.

Normally, it would be Norman who notices things first, wouldn’t it? He had a lot of value that went unappreciated that way. But that night, it was Juan Quistador that heard something off first – a single footstep floors above where he and his first mate were climbing the steps. He had Private Parakeet lean out over the railing and peek up.

“Human,” Parakeet said. “Not dressed like either of the guards.”

The two of them went off and warned Pearly Princess and Diggie Dog, but Cat was right – she and Bendy were on their own. Now Cat and Bendy didn’t want to spend that much time apart after everything, but when Bell was in here looking for Bendy, Bendy and Cat were trying to build a booby trap for any intruders, and they’d split up to gather their materials faster.

Cat had been down in the warehouse, gathering string from the costuming department, and Bendy was up stealing the bells the music department used in the last Christmas special.

Cat ran into Henry on her way up to the ground floor, and he stopped her to ask if she’d seen any of the other Toons – they weren’t in Level 14’s maze where he left them. She hadn’t, and she and Henry both suspected what was up, even if neither of them said it out loud.

“Do you at least know where Bendy is?”

That she was able to tell Henry, and he had her keep close behind them as they hurried to the music department.

They were in the department entrance, close enough to see themselves in the glass of the vinyl record display despite the dark. Then _bang!_ All nightmares came true.

The shot came from up in the projector booth, and Henry, scared that Bell might come back their way and find Cat, rushed her through the door between the department hall and the recording pit and had her hide behind a barrel that had been placed there to catch leaking ink.

He cracked the orchestra door and saw what he thought was a human Bendy at first, despite the Toon-like outfit. Bendy was looking up into the projection booth and saying, “Not if it helps ya. If you’re gonna kill me, hurry it up.”

BANG!

The shot was louder than the first of course – that’s what you get when you use a handgun.

Bendy didn’t so much as stumble, so Henry assumed Bell must have missed, despite the pounding footsteps.

He opened the door. He eyed the floor for anything resembling blood, but there was only a broken pen gun and an assortment of fallen little bells. “Bendy, you okay buddy?”

The moment Bendy turned his eyes on him, he shivered – it was the eyes. Just like a black hole, and not because of the color – but like a black hole because Bendy was staring at him and Henry got the impression that if he got too close, he wouldn’t be able to escape whatever was running through the demon’s mind.

He forced a smile and held out a hand. “You could really have gotten hurt there. For a moment, I thought Bell-” His eyes found the bullet hole: in the music stand that had Bendy standing directly between it and the projection booth. “-shot you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question of the week:
> 
> Have you ever had a hard time believing something that turned out to be true?
> 
> Next time:
> 
> How demonic is Bendy anyway?


	15. In Which Sins are Remembered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Henry improves the studio’s security, including getting it night guards. After a disastrous night guarding the Toons with Tom, he gets Bendy alone and gifts him a broken pen gun. Thursday night, Bill Bell breaks into the studio and Detoons Bendy.
> 
> In the present, you find the document that proves that you aren’t just Bendy Kenneth Cox-Stein – you are the Detooned Bendy.

Henry swallowed down the lump in his throat. He held out his arms for Bendy. “Come here.”

Bendy went, but when Henry tried to hug him, his arms went right through, as though it were only the air where Bendy was standing.

When Bendy looked him eye-to-eye, empty-eyed, Henry let out a sob. It was all his fault, after all – or at least that’s what was running through his head.

“I loved ya, ya know,” Bendy said. “You were my dad.”

Henry sunk to his knees. “I still love you.”

Bendy gagged in Henry’s face. “I know that, and like this it just makes me sick – you? The guy who wanted ta be the one ta do this ta me. What were ya gonna do when it turns out demons are real?”

It’s unlike anything he’d say now, isn’t it? But say it he did, and Henry still remembers it.

“Is it that bad?” Henry asked.

“Warmth. Peace. Hope. Tsch! Who knew ya needed a body ta feel happy emotions?” Bendy stomped the ground, but his boot made no noise. “Everyone gets a body except me. It ain’t fair!”

Henry knew it was Bell’s fault, but it felt like his, so he hung his head. Crossing his arms, he said, “Go on. You’ve got more to get off your chest, don’t you?”

“Bell was just tellin’ me I outta be _grateful_ for this – I’m immortal, he said. I’ll be this way forever, he said. Then he couldn’t even kill me properly.”

Maybe it was a fortune it was Henry having that conversation with Bendy, or maybe it was a curse. Regardless, who could care about Bendy and not be concerned with where things were heading? “You’re still _you_ , aren’t you? There’s no reason people shouldn’t still love you. We’ll get through this.”

“Creator, I can’t live like this. Finish me off!”

Even if Henry had a means to, could he ever have agreed to something like that while still believing Bendy could be good? He had to squeeze his eyes shut so Bendy wouldn’t have to see him crying. “So what if _my son_ isn’t happier like this? Is oblivion your only chance at a good life? You’ll lose all of yourself, and you’ll never get it back.”

“I hate ya.”

“Bendy, tell me something else I can do to help!”

For a moment, Henry was scared it wasn’t going to work – Bendy had gone from quiet to silent. He glanced at him, but his expression was blank.

Then, finally…. “The Ink Machine,” he said.

Henry just had time to blink before Bendy pointed to his fallen pen gun, which Henry picked up. “What about it? Do you think I can get it working? What does my pen gun have to do with anything?”

The fragments molded themselves into a syringe in Henry’s hands, leaving him holding a warm, smelly piece of plastic. Henry turned it over and examined it: a smooth sliding operation, and little black marks of unspecified units.

“I can work with the ink the machine already has, but if I have a chance at makin’ myself another body, I need donations from the other Toons. Livin’ ink.”

Henry watched Bendy’s face, but it still read as empty. “Donations?”

“Just a little bit of ink from their veins. Not enough ta hurt them. If ya can get all of ‘em ta donate, it should be enough.”

Not that Henry could tell just by looking at the syringe, but its needle was coated. Acetone. Nothing can kill a Toon while they’re still a Toon – not permanently – but acetone comes the closest. Even a little bit puts a Toon out of commission for days, and they say it’s the most painful thing they can experience.

Without that knowledge, what Henry heard was a reasonable proposal from his beloved Toon to get himself back to normal. He curled his hand around the syringe and promised Bendy he’d do it. He got to his feet.

Bendy cocked his head. If real demons hear as well as Bendy could in his Toon form, he might have been distracted by scrapes coming from the barrel in the hall.

Behind it, Cat was getting restless. And why wouldn’t she be? It was her only friend in the orchestra pit, and she was told to stay put. She didn’t know how long a Detooner would stick around anyway.

What if Bendy needed her? What if Henry needed her to save him from Bendy?

And to top things off, she could almost hear his voice in her ear: _Cat, we’ve got a problem in here, and I really, really need ya!_

She was climbing over the barrel as Bendy called out to Henry.

Henry was too busy giving Bendy the most reassuring smile he could muster to notice anything. “Yes?”

Bendy was quiet for a moment, in which time, Cat reached the doorframe.

“Bendy?” Henry asked.

“Ya said ya talked your Detoonin’ victims into agreein’ ta be Detooned, so ya should be even better at gettin’ people ta give ya their ink, right?”

Cat froze. She heard what Bendy said, but she wanted more confirmation from him that she’d understood him correctly. She sought out his eyes.

Bendy met them back for less than a second – not enough time for Henry to notice – but she had much the same reaction to them that Henry did: where before, she knew the demon was her friend, now she could only imagine he wanted to hurt her. Her fur stood on end, and she reminded herself that – yes, Bendy was her friend, and since he could still reason, she hoped he would remember that too.

He seemed to at first because he asked Henry, “Ya won’t have any problems with say, Toons runnin’ away and tellin’ everyone ya have a sharp pointy needle?”

Cat took that as a signal to do just that. If her species weren’t so light on their feet, maybe Henry would have heard her running away, but as it was, she only left inky paw prints behind her.

She bolted through the Music Department, down the stairs, and toward the safe house. She twisted a paw on a fallen kaleidoscope on the way, shook it off, and knocked over some shelves full of toy trains. Crash! Clatter! She was lucky not to have been noticed by Bell, or at least so it seemed in the moment. But really, how lucky is it when Bell’s absence was because he was heading down to the offices to snoop through papers and get a better idea how to make Bendy a tempting deal?

And besides, at some point during her run, Henry was noticing her prints and trying to ask Bendy how much Cat had heard. But when he was answered with silence once again, he turned around and saw that Bendy was gone.

Bendy was ahead of Cat – already to the safe house with the sort of documents Bell wanted his hands on. He’d somehow gathered up Henry’s note in the newspaper and the folder of evidence about Boris’s Detooning.

Inside the safe house, Juan Quistador and Private Parakeet were guarding the door with loose boards they found, and Diggie and Pearly were hiding under the table, using that same trash can that Bendy put Sammy’s book in as a makeshift shield. Bendy appeared, curled up, next to the latter two, documents beside him. He got their attention with a wail.

Their heads turned. The two of them jumped, thumping their heads against the table.

Lumps formed and birds circled their heads with tweets, but they ignored that in favor of clinging to each other.

Juan and Parakeet thought it was one of the girls wailing at first, but they heard chattering teeth and got worried. When they came to check things out, they found that it was a crying boy who was not recognizable from just the legs he had in front of him and the arms he had wrapped around himself.

Parakeet bent down. “Squawk! How did you get in here? Squawk!”

Bendy made a show of wiping his eyes. “I can’t believe it! Joey was right – humans are the real demons!”

The Toons stared at him. It didn’t quite make sense to them why he’d be talking about humans being the real demons if he clearly had the demonic power to pop up randomly.

Juan tried to poke him with his board. He startled when it went through and tried again. He did well though – it didn’t take him long to recover enough to say, “Speak up, _diablo_. What are you talking about?”

Bendy hiccoughed. “Humans are the real demons, so I was a livin’ human when I got Detooned. I’m only like this now ‘cause next I was shot with a bullet. I’m sorry. I know ghosts are scary and all, but I had ta warn ya!”

Juan and Parakeet dropped their boards. “Ghost?” They backed away.

Bendy wailed and buried his head in his knees. “I swear I won’t hurt ya! I told ya I only came ta warn ya.”

Diggie was closest to Bendy, and she’s not scared of ghosts, so she crawled his way. She paused the moment her paw hit a coffee-stained folder she knew wasn’t there before. “What’s this?”

“Proof. I had ta know why. Turns out, I wasn’t the first of his own Toons he did this to. I think he’s scared. He wants ta find out where we come from. So does Joey – he looked into who got Boris and recruited him. The two of ‘em want ta experiment on us without anyone suspectin’ them after. Did ya notice that machine they’ve got with all the ink? I didn’t know what it was for. And they convinced Cat they’ll spare her if she draws the rest of us out. She sent me ta an ambush!”

He vanished right as Cat pounded on the door. “Ye have got ter open up – Henry be right behind me, and he’s got himself a needle!”

The Toons screamed. They opened the door alright, but it was for Diggie and Pearly to run to a different hiding place and for Juan and Parakeet to chase Cat around with their boards.

Cat got swatted and pounded. She fled through the toy shop and all the way to the elevator, where she closed herself in.

She stayed there trembling until the two finally gave up. Even then, she stayed and waited for any sign of a Detooner – it wasn’t as though the others were going to listen to her anyway.

Most likely, she was pouting at the time that Juan and Parakeet were trying to make their way back to the other Toons but were finding themselves constantly taking the wrong turn into the Demon hallway then the Wolf hallway then the Demon hallway then the Wolf hallway….

It’s not that they’re terrible navigators – at least when they’re not navigating themselves straight to the pirates who want to rob them – it’s that each of them blamed the other for giving bad directions.

Every so often, Juan would hear Parakeet’s squeak in his ear. “Straight course ahead!”

It never was.

Every so often, Parakeet would hear Juan’s bark. “Round the bend!”

It lead to the loop.

And then the voices changed to accusations – of Parakeet constantly steering the ship straight to the pirates, and of Juan trying to woo Pearly away from Parakeet. Never mind that she was Krank’s girlfriend. Neither of them admitted to saying such things, but even if it wasn’t Bendy who said them, why would those two prideful Toons confess to anything?

Bendy left them to chase each other with planks and popped up not too far away, where Cat was still hiding in the elevator, just one floor down.

Cat said she was standing watch for any Toon who needed a quick escape for safety, but more likely she was just pouting in there. She was doing whatever it was she was doing in there when the elevator started rising of its own accord.

No one was waiting to get on.

She grabbed the metal bars and tried to peer above the car. “Bendy? Is that me matey up there?”

It was, if the _ha_ from above the elevator was anything to go by. “ _Matey_? Is that how ya treat your _mateys_? Ya promised you’d take my place, not send me off alone ta be Detooned.”

Cat yowled. She called Bendy’s name, but she only got a whispered response: “Besides, if we were such good pals, why did I never tell ya that Henry’s a threat? Ya want ta know the real reason PirateTime hates ya? It’s ‘cause you’re unlovable and were never worthy of friends.”

The elevator plummeted.

Cat screamed. Everyone heard it.

Norman was down on Floor S, where we kept the monitors for the security cameras. He had the electrics pulled apart, as though trying to figure out why they’d all cut out.

Henry was on Floor K, making his way down to the Ink Machine, but he rushed to the elevator shaft and grabbed at the chains. He got a friction burn for his efforts and a laugh from Bendy. “Did you do this?”

“You’re the one who made me a demon,” Bendy said. He didn’t stick around.

It was at that point where everyone lost track of him. Only Bell made any sort of claim otherwise.

  
  


You remember that headline you read about Bell being possessed. Quietly, you ask if that’s when you did it.

Uncle Joey shakes his head. “Bell was trying something with that claim that your dad’s lawyer explained to him: in law, there is what’s called an automaton defense. That is, if you are not reasonably in control of your body nor responsible for putting yourself in that state – like with sleepwalkers or people who are involuntarily intoxicated – you can’t be held criminally responsible for your actions.”

If Bell’s in prison, the court clearly didn’t go for it. But how would that stop the murder from being your fault?

You wouldn’t be surprised if he came after you once he’s out of jail, especially with how everyone’s acting. Would he be right to do so?

You’re watching yourself twiddle your thumbs when Uncle Joey manages to get your attention again. “That defense is more applicable to you than to him, you know. He’s the one who shot you with that pen gun in the first place! That’s what the court ruled – that even if he was possessed – which I doubt, by the way – he’s the one ultimately responsible for that situation, and thus any damage you caused.”

Or so he says, but it’s like your dad being a Detooner again, isn’t it? If Uncle Joey doesn’t want to believe something, he’ll deny it as long as possible.

Besides, you could still think back then, couldn’t you? And if you wanted a body again, why wouldn’t you possess Bell? It’s not like you never ended up possessing anyone. So when you open your mouth, you shift your argument a little to focus on another concern: “And I’m forgiven just like that? But I was still makin’ choices, wasn’t I? Is this ‘cause they didn’t think I’m a person?”

Uncle Joey frowns. “Some of it is. It’s gotta be, because that defense only applies to criminal responsibility, not any sort of civil responsibilities. But the court was quicker to forgive you than one or two of your fellow Toons were.”

“Thing is, what do you think? How responsible were you for all that? Do _you_ forgive yourself?”

How can you answer that? Do you have a clear enough idea of what happened that such a thing is possible?

Especially with Cat and the others remembering what you don’t, you’ve got to hear the rest of what you did. You ask Uncle Joey to continue.

  
  


Henry was running after the elevator when he heard sniffling in the vents – it was Diggie and Pearly.

The poor Toons were cold, but even more than that, they were scared – especially once Henry took the vent cover off. They screamed and scooted back.

Henry bent down. “It’s alright. It’s just me. Cat told you something strange, didn’t she?”

The funny thing about Toon eyes is that they’re always visible, even in the dark. Henry saw two white ovals, apparently floating inside the vent with black circles for the eyes. Both were looking at the syringe in his hand.

“Did she tell you why I have this?”

Yes, Henry knew that Bendy dropped the elevator with Cat in it and all, but he didn’t think he would lie to him about wanting to get back to normal – Bendy didn’t lie about that part – so Henry had to try to help him. He kept speaking calmly, and eventually he talked the Toons into coming out. He even got Pearly Princess to allow him to draw her ink.

Henry had her hold out her noodle arm and touched the needle gently to her elbow. The moment he put it in, she shrieked and curled up into herself.

Diggie chased him down the stairs, ignoring any attempt he made to explain himself. He couldn’t lose her until he ducked into one of those Little Miracle Stations on Level 9.

Deciding it was too late to smooth things over with Diggie and Pearly, he went to check on Cat.

He didn’t catch up with her, but Cat was down on Floor S, trembling inside the elevator and thinking only a few seconds had passed – but she was probably in shock for longer than that.

Norman saw her that way when he reached the elevator. He opened it up and helped Cat to her feet.

Just because Toons can pull themselves back from physical stuff that happens to them doesn’t mean they can pull the same trick with their emotions, so she started sobbing.

Norman wiped her eyes. “What’s going on up there?”

Cat told him about Bendy, Henry, and the intruder.

“We have to call the police about this. And Mr. Drew, but good luck telling _him_ that his best friend’s wrapped up in this.” His eyes softened. “I’ll have to tell you what’s really going on with Bendy once this is all over.”

He took Cat’s hand and led her toward the offices, but the phones were no good. But he did find the card with Father Black’s number, which he gave to Cat. He also pressed a quarter into her paws. “We’ll have to leave the studio to find some phones, but while I’m calling the police, do you think you could call Father Black?”

Cat said she saw the value in that plan right away, but how could she not be shaken up as Norman lead her through the studio? In the moment, she needed someone to assure her that nothing was her fault, remind her that Bendy’s behavior was only because he got Detooned, and explain to her what Father Black could do to help. Because they needed to be in stealth mode, Norman never had a chance to do that for her.

They could have passed Henry, who was the next floor up – Level 9 – but they ran into Bell instead.

Everything fishy Cat thought about him the night Crank and Pirate Pup died boiled to the surface. What happened next is something she still blames herself for: she blurt out, “It’s him!”

Bell turned, handgun already in his hand. He fired three shots into Norman’s chest.

Henry heard and came running. He peeked around the door and met Cat’s eyes.

She was yowling and begging for Bell to stop hurting people as Henry sneaked up on him – even she herself wasn’t sure if she was trying to be a distraction or not.

Anyway, Henry got behind Bell and, once he saw an opening, tackled him to the floor. Both Bell’s wrist and his pen gun cracked on contact.

Henry looked up at Cat. “How’s Norman?”

There was blood. So much blood. But the flow had stopped already, and Norman was growing cold. Cat started sobbing – and she admitted to it later too. She admitted that she was feeling guilty enough that she thought the only way to make it right – it being all the Detooning tragedies she was present for – was to let Henry take her ink for Bendy, and then to let him Detoon her like she should have been in anyone’s place.

Henry barely understood what she was asking him through her hiccoughing sobs. “No.” He got up and lifted Bell off the floor. “You and I are going to lock Bell in the closet so he can’t hurt anyone else, and then we’re going to get some help. Norman and Bendy would like that, wouldn’t they?”

When they got out, their first call was to Father Black, their next call was to the police, and their final call was to the studio owner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> The strength of a friendship is tested.
> 
> Question of the week:
> 
> Is there a difference between innocence and guiltlessness?


	16. In Which a Blanket's Poor Protection

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Bendy takes Henry on a guilt trip and sics him on the other Toons. He torments Juan, Parakeet, and Cat.
> 
> While Norman is taking Cat to get help, Bell shoots him dead – possibly under Bendy’s influence. Henry and Cat lock him up and go to get help.

It was one in the morning when I got the call, but even groggy, I could only think of one reason why my phone would be ringing. I answered with, “Where’s Bendy?”

The answer was hard to hear, mostly because it was one I didn’t want to be true, but also because Henry’s voice was so strained: “Joey, he’s the first one who was shot.”

I cursed and demanded to know who shot him. The conversation lead on to cover all that happened that night, and though my kitchen window showed a night clear enough for the moon and even some stars, there was a flash of something across the sky and a thunder crash over the line.

Bendy.

I had to get him help, so I asked, “Well, why aren’t you cheering Bendy up? It sounds like his usual pranks to me.”

Or so I wanted to believe, but the storm? Trying to get the other Toons hurt as a prank? And all the other stuff? I’m glad I wasn’t there, because I might have pushed things toward a worse outcome by trying to help him.

“He’s not going to trust me.”

“Why not?”

Henry was silent, which just made my heart beat faster. I was scared of what he was going to say, to be honest.

“Henry, why not?”

“Just pray for him, okay? He needs all the prayers he can get right now.”

Do you think I got to be a CEO on prayer alone? No, not only did I not believe in it – and if a part of me did, it was concerned with the clash between heaven and demons like Bendy – but I wanted something I could see the immediate results of to do. “I’m calling Tom to take me over there, but you – you’re in the best position to help right now. Talk to Bendy!”

I was starting to hang up, and I’m sure Henry knew it too, because he shouted loud enough I could hear it through the distant speaker: “I betrayed his trust, okay? I can’t! Promise me you’ll pray for him.”

It was enough to stop me from hanging up. I brought the phone back to my ear. And you know what I did next? I threatened Henry. I threatened my best friend into telling me what he meant.

All the evidence I had against him and I still refused to believe it until Henry himself told me then and there that he was the one who Detooned Boris. I hung up before he could say anything else to me, and I stared at the black metal handle of my phone.

It took me longer than I intended to call Tom, but I did it. And you know what else? I knew I owed him an apology, so for the first time in my life, I attempted one.

  
  


In the meantime, Henry and Cat fought the storm for their way back to the studio. They entered, cold and drenched.

By that time, Diggie was running, tears on her face, as she was chased by a deformed vision of Pirate Pup that only she could see. He was accusing her of being a horrible mother who let him be Detooned and killed.

The hallucination was Bendy’s doing, supposedly, but everyone else agreed he was elsewhere.

Juan Quistador and Private Parakeet were still chasing each other around with their planks and were now covered in bumps and bruises. Juan Quistador was missing a tooth, and Private Parakeet was missing an eye.

“Break it up!” Henry shouted, but that caused Juan and Parakeet to gang up on him and Cat instead.

They separated him from Cat. They chased him around the Art Department and down the stairs.

And upstairs, Diggie spotted Cat. “She did it, not me!”

Cat would have stared at her coworker for talking to herself if she wasn’t starting to charge. She backed away. “Methinks yer mind be lost at sea.”

Isn’t that a typical scene? A dog chasing a cat? They ran around the upper floors, ducking under desks and climbing up pipes until Cat knocked one loose and ink flooded onto her and Diggie. Cat got out of there while Diggie was still trying to wipe the ink from her face.

She must have been in that unobservant state Toons get in when they’re panicked. The one where the character they’re running from can hand them a board to barricade the door and they won’t even notice - although Diggie wasn’t chasing Cat, she ran in circles, leaving a scattering of inky footprints behind herself.

There was a knock on the front door, and that’s what’s finally snapped her out of it. She vaulted across the front room, hoping it was Father Brown or the police.

It was Shawn, who was trying to shield an infant from the downpour with only a blue-and-white quilted blanket available.

He ran in without asking, figuring that anyone would be okay with bringing a one-week-old in from the storm. And what else did he bring with him but one more perspective to make it unclear what exactly happened that night?

According to him, the next ten minutes were spent calming Cat down. She was still freaked about Diggie and crying about Bendy.

According to Cat, she was telling him that he and the baby should seek refuge somewhere else, what with a dangerous Detooner and a deranged Digger about.

Downstairs, Diggie was supposedly wrestling Cat, but it was Juan covered in bruises afterward.

He thought she might have been possessed by Bendy.

Bendy was still possessing Bell, according to Bell himself. He didn’t say what he was doing at the start of the time, but he was in the writing department. Character sketches were laid out around his work area – scrapped ideas, and not just scrapped ideas, but new characters being developed too. All our Toons’ strengths and weaknesses were out in the open, and with each file, a sketch and a signature from their designer, Henry Stein.

Henry was searching the writing department for Bendy when he found Bell. The moment Bell saw Henry? Well, Shawn and the Toons confirmed there was some sort of ruckus with bangs and shouting.

Bell kept griping that Bendy used his body to take out a grudge against Henry.

Henry’s version of events?

Bendy was there alright, but he wasn’t possessing Bell. He thought he might have said something to Bell instead, something that left him pale and shaky. And still, he was taking a step toward Bendy. “I will worship you the rest of my life. I will make others worship you, your Greatness. Just exterminate the world’s Toons. Aren’t you angry at them?”

Bendy grinned. “I’m angry at them alright.”

He probably was too. Even Bell said Bendy said something like this, albeit from his lips and about humans. It’s hard to tell what he actually believes, but he’s adamant that Bendy is still a threat.

In either case, Henry ran forward.

Henry wanted to stop the demon. “Don’t! Bendy, if you hurt them, you’ll feel horrible when we get you back to being yourself again!”

Bell restrained him, whether with Bendy controlling his body or on Bendy’s command. He locked his arms behind his back and made him kneel on the uneven floor.

Henry swore Bendy was squatting right in front of him. “Ya haven’t figured it out, have ya? I ain’t gettin’ a body back. I’m stuck like this forever, and it’s all ya fault.”

Bell didn’t deny that Henry thought he saw it, but he thought Henry might have gone a little crazy. Members of the jury thought Henry must have gone a little crazy. There were things he said happened just a little later that had even his long-time friends wondering if he’d been hallucinating.

But who can say for sure if that’s true or not?

Henry’s eyes were stinging. He wanted to argue back, but he swallowed the lump in his throat. He hung his head for a moment, saying a silent prayer.

Bendy tsked. “Is that all you’re gonna do? That’s worthless.”

It wasn’t. Henry took the deep lungfuls of air he needed to calm down. And when he was done talking to God, he had an idea of what to do. It went against everything anyone would think is a good idea, but at least he felt okay with it. “Is it true you can’t feel anything good like this?”

“Turns out I do have one nice feelin’: schadenfreude. Ya wouldn’t want ta stop me from havin’ the one good thing I can, would ya?” Bendy moved his nose toward Henry’s.

Though he knew they wouldn’t touch, Henry flinched back on instinct. He might have said another prayer. Bendy might have laughed in his face as he did so.

Henry opened his mouth. He couldn’t get the words out.

Bendy might have spoken while he couldn’t: “This is borin’! Rough him up!”

Bell shoved Henry to the ground and kicked him. “I told you he wouldn’t be playing tame forever.”

Henry reached for Bell’s ankle, but Bell stepped on his hand. It started to bruise.

Henry grabbed Bell’s knee. Bell stomped down harder. They started a sort of wrestling match, where neither could move much.

“Some fight,” Bendy muttered.

Bell pinned Henry’s torso to the ground. “What do I do with this ‘un?”

“Kill him.” Bendy had stopped paying attention to the two. Following his glare led to a fly, as though Bendy were jealous of even it for having a body. He took his gaze off the fly to repeat the words with more gusto.

With Henry knowing what he did, how could he hold it against Bendy? It still broke his heart to hear.

Henry blocked a blow to the back of his head. “Wait!”

The next blow hit him. He struggled. “Bendy! If it’s my fault, then I need to be the one to fix this. Just try to be yourself again, and you can have my body.”

He said that. Both admitted it. Can you imagine how it looked in court?

Bell says it’s what lured Bendy from his body – the promise to punish someone he hated more.

If Bendy wasn’t possessing Bell, he was telling him to stop. He walked toward Henry without any footsteps sounding, and with each inch, Henry had to work harder to keep a smile on his face. Each silent step had Henry’s flesh turning to jello, and Bendy’s eyes were on his soul again. It really was his fault, wasn’t it? Thinking a demon could be good – no, he went beyond that. He turned a blind eye to what he was doing to his own children. All three of them.

And now? Now his latest failure was staring at him, as though he expected something.

Henry swallowed. Just one little doubt that he wanted to give Bendy his body and the whole thing would fall apart, wouldn’t it?

“Your body?” Bendy asked.

“Yes, my body.” Henry was still under Bell’s boot, and he couldn’t break free. He settled for holding a hand toward Bendy. “Take it.”

Bendy didn’t try to. Not right away. No, he circled around. It’s like in the movies isn’t it? People stand around and talk about plans rather than act them out: if Bendy took Henry’s body, he would have what he wanted. He could make Henry do whatever, and Henry would have no choice but to do it. He could feel again – what it was really like to strangle someone with bare hands.

He went into such detail that even Bell said he was a little disturbed.

And Henry? Of course, but what would he do about it? He watched Bendy circle around and listened carefully: the voice was a bit too loud, a bit too fast, and with a bit too much waver to convince him Bendy meant all those things. And he payed attention to Bell too – the pressure from Bell’s foot was lessened, so he pushed Bell off and walked to Bendy. He stopped an arm’s length from him and offered his hand again. “You’re stalling. There’s no need to be scared.”

“I ain’t scared! I’m just thinkin’ of the best way ta take control of your body so I can feel it when I knock over things like this!” Bendy pointed to a cabinet, which fell.

It banged to the ground with enough force to get attention elsewhere in the studio.

All its drawers opened. Papers scattered across the floor, and with them, one Bendy plushy. It wasn’t the one Shawn made for Bendy, but it was one of the ones he made.

Bendy made a noise as if he could choke without a body.

Henry picked it up and squeaked it against his chest. “Here. Something to comfort you when you’ve got those feelings again. You can ask for forgiveness later if you want, but I’ll never hate you for any of this.”

Though there were no tears, Bendy wiped at his eyes. He reached for Henry, expressions flashing rapidly across his face.

Henry moved closer. “It’s alright. Joey’s on his way here. He’ll take care of you, and you’ll be able to feel again.”

Bendy still wasn’t moving, so Henry sent him a smile. Bendy reached toward him. But then? Bendy stopped, his hand still over a foot away.

“I can’t. I can’t do it.”

Henry offering Bendy his body earlier? That was nothing to the court compared to the next bit. It’s where Henry’s account is most different from the others.

Shawn still wasn’t close enough to hear details. He was following Cat down, down, the creaking stairs, getting closer to Henry, Bell, and Bendy with each step, but the ruckus had quieted down.

Bell claimed it was because Henry was offering Bendy a deal where he would find Bendy a body he could possess forever if Bendy dropped his grudge against him.

But Henry? Henry said that’s the point where a voice said, “That’s enough. Get away from him.”

Henry turned around. There were a group of people behind him, all dressed in white robes and floating above the ground.

At the back were two familiar faces that drew his eyes – his grandma and… Stuart. Stuart smiled, and so did his grandma. She nodded ahead.

In front of them were two young men who looked very similar to the young man the baby grew up to be – almost doppelgangers. They each had a sword, raised at the ready, and they were looking toward the man at the very front: Kenny Cox. Kenny had his sword pointed straight at Bendy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time:
> 
> Plead with the angels.
> 
> Question of the week:
> 
> Who would show up to fight for you?


	17. In Which Crossroads are Presented

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> Henry tells Joey what happened to Bendy and tells him that he was the one who Detooned Boris. He fights his way through a storm with Cat to reach the studio, where everything’s gone to chaos.
> 
> Cat and Henry get separated, and Cat lets Shawn and baby Ken into the studio.
> 
> Henry has some sort of confrontation with Bell and Bendy. According to Henry, a bunch of angels show up – his grandma, his son, two near-doppelgangers of Bendy’s, and Kenny Cox.

Bendy cried. He was backing away from Kenny’s sword.

“No, not you. Them.” Kenny pointed to something over Bendy’s shoulder.

There were two men floating in the air, grabbing on to Bendy’s arms and body. Looking at them gave Henry much the same feeling he had whenever he’d made eye contact with the Detooned Bendy. In fact, the main difference was that the guilty thoughts weren’t exclusively linked to Bendy.

Imagine everything you’ve ever done wrong. Imagine the guilt hitting you all at once. Imagine everyone you’ve ever hurt still in pain because of you, with no way it could be made right. Nor will you ever see the ones you love again. Imagine you could never be forgiven for any of it. You’re hopeless. You’re not worthy of love, happiness, or any of that stuff, so you withhold permission from yourself to feel that way. And you’ll be that way forever. That’s the way those men made Henry feel.

Looking into Bendy’s eyes made them feel the same way it had, but it limited the thoughts. It felt better than looking at those men. Silently, Henry vowed that he would keep Bendy from ending up like them.

But how is it possible for any mortal human?

“He’s a devil like us. He’s ours.” The men yanked Bendy backward.

Bendy reached for Henry’s hand, and Henry tried to grab it. But the hand still wasn’t solid enough for him to grasp.

“I said get away from him.”

When Kenny said that, the two doppelgangers charged at the demons. The men dropped Bendy and retreated to the edge of the room. “He’ll be ours. You’ll see!”

“Leave!”

The men left.

Bendy was left on his knees, sobbing. “They’re right. I’m just like them.”

No one ever figured out where the men came from, but the best anyone can guess is that those were the demons that answered Bell’s prayer to get revenge on his family’s killer. Henry already wondered if that was the case, so, seating himself on the floor next to Bendy, he said, “No, you’re not. They hate you.”

“I hate me too!” Bendy buried his head in his knees and bawled noisily.

Henry tried to talk to him. He succeeded in getting Bendy ranting.

Bendy regretted everything – even stuff from before he got Detooned. But making his loved ones feel bad? Turning them against each other? Hoping someone would get hurt? Or even the smaller things like borrowing glue without asking, not listening to his creators when they said to stay away from studio employees who don’t like him, and losing his temper at people so easily and playing mean-spirited pranks on them as a result. Does any of that prevent someone who willingly chased the other demons away from him from seeing all the good he’d done as well?

The doppelgangers were down on the ground with him. One spared a smile for Henry.

This time, imagine that everyone you love is nearby. No one has any ill will toward each other, nor is there any concept of loss, sorrow, or suffering. Your mind is bliss. Everything is warm, and you’re sure it will go on forever. That is how the angel made Henry feel.

But Bendy was still crying, so one of the angels called his name.

Bendy tensed. “I know what I am, but could ya at least help Cat and my dad? They’ve been goin’ through rough times. Cat doesn’t have any friends, and Dad misses his baby.” He sniffed. “Let Cat have a friend and give Stuart back?”

Henry didn’t have any pictures of Stuart, so Bendy couldn’t have known he was in the room with them until – try wrapping your head around this – the baby angel spoke. “No, I’m needed here. I’m not going back to him.”

If there was a time in all that that Henry hoped he was a good dad, it was then – his chest was warm from hearing Bendy call him _Dad_ again, and Stuart was smiling when he said he was needed in heaven. The death couldn’t have had anything to do with him or Bendy.

Bendy wouldn’t have seen it that way. What he knew was the lethargy and the acting against Toons that Henry had done. His jaw was dropped, and he was staring at Stuart. “You’re Stuart?”

Stuart beamed.

“But ya have a chance ta get ya body back and go home to a dad who really loves ya!”

One of the doppelgangers placed his hand on Bendy’s shoulder and leaned forward. No one else heard what he said to Bendy, but Bendy relaxed. He was staring at the doppelganger though.

Or perhaps there was someone else who heard what was said – the rest of the angels moved in, and Henry’s grandmother sat with them. She was smiling. “We heard your prayer about being human. We thought you might ask, so we asked this young man-”

She nodded to one of the doppelgangers, who pumped his fist. “I’m being born _à_ _Paris!_ ”

“-if he would be born to another family instead of to the Coxes. And we asked this young man-”

The other doppelganger wrapped himself around Bendy and gave him puppy dog eyes. "Can I be part of your family? A brother if you want to go back to being a Toon, or a son if you want to be human? I mean, if you live long enough to have children."

“-if he would take the body in case you didn’t want to be human after all. We wanted you to make the decision after you understood what it is you’d be going against, with as little pressure to say _yes_ or _no_ as possible. We can return you to your Toon body if you don’t want this opportunity.”

If by what Bendy was going against, she meant the demons, she might not have been excluding Bell. But who can say?

It’s a nice story, isn’t it? The angels setting Bendy up with his current body. If you believe it, you believe it. It’s certainly better than the alternative.

Because in the brief time that Henry said the angels were talking to Bendy about the last details it would mean for him if he became human – warnings and dangers and responsibilities and promises and all that – Shawn was carrying the baby to the Writing Department door. It sneezed. The poor little thing caught a cold from being out in the storm.

Shawn heard the sneeze of course, but he didn’t hear any angelic conversations. What he did hear was Henry asking, “How are you feeling now?”

Bendy was feeling good, or at least a lot better than when he was hopeless. But that’s not hard to do, is it? Whether angels interfered or not. For his sake, they might have.

But by the time Cat opened the door for Shawn, any angels – if they’d been there – were gone. Bendy went straight up to Shawn, eyes on the baby.

Shawn recognized Bendy. Knowing what Cat said helped, but the black clothes and that white bow-tie? Those were a dead giveaway.

For once, Bendy’s eyes didn’t affect someone the way they had everyone else, but Shawn was disconcerted anyway. It was because of the goosebumps-covered little one he held in his arms and the fact that Bendy never looked away, never blinked.

Shawn worried that he was wrong. That Bendy was one of the cockle after all, about to corrupt a good seed.

Cat was trying to get Bendy’s attention. She didn’t know how she could distract someone as cruel as Bendy had become from someone so innocent, but you know something? She actually did try. She said Bendy’s name – weakly – and she waved – just a small little wave.

Bendy spoke. None of the four accounts differed on what his words were: “This is mine.”

But three – Shawn’s, Henry’s, and Cat’s – said it had been a question.

Naturally, Henry thought Bendy was asking God. He wished Bendy had looked heavenwards to ask the question because it would have been a little more clear to the others what was going on.

Shawn wasn’t sure who Bendy was asking. He could see Henry there and Bell there, but how would they have known he was bringing the baby by?

Cat didn’t know who Bendy would be asking either. When pressed, she said the intonation might have been more like the one Bell said he used – that of a statement, more of a claiming an infant for himself than an asking the adults if it was a good thing to do.

Her account still differed from Bell’s.

The baby was pale. No one argued against that. But whereas the other three said the baby was still breathing, Bell said the baby was already dead. Therefore, killing the infant to exorcise Bendy would not be murder. But possibly, an act of mercy, if possession was as horrible for the dead infant as he claimed it was for him.

Bendy reached for the baby. His spirit vanished from view.

Moments later, the baby started crying, for the first time in his life. He wouldn’t stop until he was in Henry’s warm, dry arms.

  
  


I didn’t believe Henry when I got to the studio, about Bendy being changed from ‘an unborn human spirit’ to a human infant. Not at first. Not even when I saw the odd sight of Cat and Diggie getting along – Diggie teaching Cat how to hold a doll like it was a baby. Not until the cops took Bendy away from Henry and Bendy screamed.

Even then, not at first.

I was there, prepared to make a demon deal with Bendy. I still am, if he ever needs it.

But while I was looking around my studio, calling my devil’s name, he never came. The studio was never so huge, so dark, or so lifeless. Its walls were echoing a baby’s cries.

I asked the others to help me look for Bendy.

They all started speaking at once. A cacophony of cries, laments, and uncertainties. The most surprising voice? Shawn’s. How could it not be? I didn’t expect him to be there.

For once, I listened to all of them. Closely. One at a time. And in the end, what other choice did I have than to believe? Bendy still hadn’t stopped crying. And Father Black, having come, was examining the infant and coming to conclusions.

It didn't help Bendy feel any better. The only thing that did, in fact, was his dad getting out of jail and holding him in his arms again.

I’m sorry.

I spent too much time looking around for my Toon when Henry told me where he was. I was too busy in the freezing studio depths to see Henry and Bell being taken away. If I had, what do you think, in those old cop cars, do you think I could have seen Bell lean over in the back seat and whisper something to Henry? He said,“You’ve really got it coming to you, Stein. First chance I’ve got, I’m coming after every last one of your Toons. I will give them slow, painful deaths. And then, I’ll go after you.”

Because there were no witnesses, there was no evidence to convict Bell of the death threat in court. He was fined for trespassing on studio property and sentenced to prison for high-cost vandalism, tampering with public phone lines, and committing second-degree murder; but not a cent or a day could be added for the death threat. Henry was watched for mental instability until he posted bail, but the police saw no need to grant him special protections afterward. If he went to jail, he’d have to deal with Bell – without the guards being certain there was a death threat against him.

It was hard for me, being betrayed by my best friend. But Henry? I didn’t want him dead. Never him. In a way, he was still mine.

I made a list. Black ink. I divided it down the middle with a big, bold line. On one side, I had _reasons to forgive Henry_. On the other, I had _reasons to fire Henry._ A big step for me. You know, I’d never considered forgiving someone before.

But what else was I supposed to do?

It took me weeks to decide to let him keep his job – on the condition that I still got to see Bendy. I went over to the house the Steins had at the time, a small brick thing with a flat roof. I spent much of my time off work in Bendy’s nursery, still painted that sky blue that was prepared for Stuart, but decorated with more decals of the designs Henry once poured his soul into for Bendy and Boris.

In that time, the Steins took Emma in. She was nice – I liked her. Mostly. Or I knew I should have liked her more. I was only just trying to learn to trust people, and she was a bit too much of a gossip for me, when she was feeling up for any sort of conversation. But when I thought about it, I couldn’t see a good reason to doubt that she was a decent human being. After all, she’d given birth to Bendy and let the Steins have him. And I believed she was the sort of person Bendy would like too.

In that time, the trials took place. Bendy was screaming whenever he went without Henry for too long, and with what Henry was facing? I decided I’d better do my best to protect everyone from Bell. I didn’t press charges for Boris, and though it cost me a lot of money and had me making promises I didn't know I could keep, I persuaded PirateTime and Warner Bros Studios to drop one or two of their own complaints against him. Henry got off with paying a fine and sending out formal apologies to the studios, and he only had to pay me back for that.

But the Toons?

They’re putting on a good face, but not all of them are over what happened that night. Even Cat has a few doubts about Bendy.

Bell?

We still don’t have evidence of that death threat. Just a note he sent the other day that he’s looking forward to seeing our Christmas specials with Alice and Cat and everyone.

And Bendy?

How are you holding up?

  
  


It’s clear that Uncle Joey’s told you the whole story. He’s taking a few pamphlets from the back of the folder and closing the rest. He takes the contract, puts it on top of the folder, puts the pamphlets on top, and slides the whole thing toward you. Your plush is set on top.

He leans on the desk. “Bendy? Are you alright?”

Do you know?

Sure, you know the truth, but did you want to?

There is a time in your life when you realize you aren't who you think you are. Your perspective of yourself has been shaped by your own bias - the person you think you see in the mirror. It could be that you're better than you thought you are. It could be that you're just a different person that you'd thought. Or it could be that you've been hiding things from yourself.

In your case, you saw yourself as a human being. A young man who'd never harm anyone.

Is your nose runny? Are your eyes wet? Are you finding it hard to breathe? Or are your hands curling into fist out of anger from what you’ve lost?

“What do I do now?”

Uncle Joey’s wheels squeak. He comes around his desk and wraps an arm around your shoulders. “That’s the magic of being an adult, Bendy – you can do whatever you want! It’s not a chance the other Toons are able to have.”

Could he give advice any less like advice?

Perhaps sensing your mood, he reaches for the phone. “Do you want to call your parents?”

Your dad should be home by now, but it’s Monday. Your mother’s probably out at her evening book club. What do you have to say to the man who had such divided opinions about Toons, and then went on to raise you? What do you want him to say to you?

In a moment, Uncle Joey makes the decision for you. “Let’s get you some comfort food.”

When he opens the door, a board swings down and brushes his head. On the wall is your old cartoon face, spray-painted in red. Its eyes are narrowed, and its teeth are sharper than its supposed to be. Under it, a signpost is propped up – two arrows, reading _THE PATH OF THE WOLF_ and _THE PATH OF THE DEMON_.

There are footsteps near the corner. An old uniform and a colorful blur of feathers are running away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question of the week:
> 
> Who are you now?
> 
> Next time:
> 
> You meet with some old friends.


	18. In Which You...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time:
> 
> The angels chase some demons away from Bendy, but not before the demons claim that Bendy will be theirs. Henry gets some final closure on Stuart, and the angels reveal their plan to allow Bendy to become human. He becomes the child born to Emma and Kenny Cox.
> 
> When Joey gets to the studio, it takes him a while to accept that the fussing baby is Bendy. He misses the chance to be a witness against Bell’s reported death threat against Henry and his Toons, but for the first time in his life, he decides to forgive someone because that someone is Henry.
> 
> Joey makes it clear that things are not over in the present. He offers to call your parents for you, but when you don’t respond, he decides to take you for some comfort food instead. The moment you enter the hall, you face a reminder of the way you treated two PirateTime Toons the night you were Detooned.

Joey takes your arm. “I’ll deal with them.  I don’t want you blaming yourself for this.”

Y ou stare at the sign. You could ask if the Toons hate you. You could ask what you ever did to them. But you know the answers.  You’re torn. It could be that you’re  innately flawed. A demon. Or you could pretend it happened to anyone else. It  happened in another lifetime anyway.

It still happened.

You’re lead through the hall and into the elevator.  It’s the new style. The metal doors close and you see your reflection in them.

H ow would anyone else feel if they looked into your eyes now?

How do you?

You take your eyes away, but which direction can you look that doesn’t end in polished metal? The floor?  Your  uncle is squeezing your hand. “Don’t beat yourself up over this.” Could looking up help?

In the corner is a security mirror,  and the reflection is even more clear. But are you looking up at the mirror? Or down at yourself?

“Bendy?”

A re you the type that wants to talk to people when you’re distraught? Or would you rather pull away? Maybe go back to the behavior you had so long ago.  Is it possible that you ever stopped being Bendy, the Dancing Demon?

I f  not , are you the same Bendy  you used to be ?  And who is that?

“Bendy, talk to me!”

U ncle Joey is waiting for an answer, but all you manage is “Why?”

Why what? Why you? Why is he looking at you like that? Why is Bell still after you?

Or why did the angels give you a chance?  If that’s what you believe. Or should you be asking why Uncle Joey told you such a story?

T he elevator dings.  Uncle Joey pushes the close door button.  He takes your arm,  but the elevator is silent for another moment.

I t’s like he decided at the last minute to stop himself from asking you something. And why wouldn’t he?  Have you ever before been in a situation you were convinced was happening to someone else?  It’s unreal.  Someone else is a demon.  Someone else was just  shown their life was a lie. Someone else  is standing in an elevator with Uncle Joey.  His warm hand on you doesn’t convince you otherwise.

T hen he shakes you.  Your sense of touch comes back first – not that it was gone, but now it’s real again. Then  you realize: yes, this is happening.

“What do you need?” he asks.

W hat was that?  That moment you had?  You fill your lungs. “Am I a demon?”

“Do you think you are?”

“I didn’t choose this!”

H e squeezes.

But you  chose it . You did, didn’t you? Not the being a demon, but the becoming human.  You breathe. You breathe. Faster. Faster. Faster. Each breath more shallow than the next. Your head feels light. Your heart pounds. Is this it? Are you dying? Your body. The one you’re possessing. “ They were right! I’m one of them!”

P ain spikes in your chest. You clutch it.

Uncle Joey pulls you  down  onto his lap. “Do you need an ambulance?”

“I ain’t a demon! I AIN’T a demon!”

Joey slams his palm into the open door button. “Help!”

The hall is almost empty, but Tom is putting a toolkit in a closet. He comes running.

You know you’re undignified.  But that’s the thing about being undignified, isn’t it? You can’t usually help it when you’re not. No matter how badly you want to look cool. No matter how badly you want to lie and say everything is fine. No matter how stupid it is that you’re shouting something you know will change nothing.

T om puts his hands on your shoulders. “ Breathe in. Keep breathing while I count to ten.”

You do. It helps some.  You try to smile for him. “ I’m fine. I  ain’t a demon. I didn’t ch o ose to be.”

H ow stupid that sounds.

“Repeat that. Slowly. Listen to yourself: it’s only natural that you’re not a demon.”

I ntellectually, you  suppose it makes sense .  You can’t be a demon while you’re still human.  To you, d id it sound like the demons who attacked you tried a little too hard to convince the angels you were one of them?  They left off with that mocking  _he’ll be ours_ .  You take a breath. A deeper one. Two. Three. “I ain’t a demon. I didn’t choose to be one.”

T om crosses his arms, but he’s not glaring at you – he’s glaring at Uncle Joey. “ There are few things more serious than losing your life,  but l osing your soul is  the worst of them.  God gave Bendy a chance. Did you let him think  he lost that?”

“He’s having a heart attack. He needs an ambulance!”

Tom offers you  his hand. “He’s too young for a heart attack.  He’s panicking.  Even those soulless things in the cafeteria might take better care of him than  an impulsive CEO. I’ll have them deal with him. You go call his parents. Explain everything.”

S oulless.  Even  an angel like Alice? You laugh. It’s not funny. Not really, but you try to laugh. It comes out as a strained wheezed.

You reach for Tom’s hand, but Uncle Joey holds you back. “Listen here, Tommy! I know you mean well, but this is my nephew you’re talking about. My Toon. I just got him back, and I am not losing him again no matter the cost. If it’s a simple matter? Great! If it’s more money we need to get him better protection? I’ve got plenty of folks I can let go. If worst comes to worst and he needs another human body, we’ll get him one!”

“I ain’t a demon!”

B ut if you went along with Uncle Joey’s ideas to keep you safe, maybe you would be.  Just how far is he willing to fall?

“Let him go. You’re good for no one when you get carried away, Drew.”

Y ou wriggle free. “ Ya told me ya learned ya lesson, but here ya are – the one who’s actin’ like a demon!  Am I supposed to be flattered that a scumbag wants me ta inherit his company?”

Uncle Joey flinches. He pulls back as though you’d just gotten in his face.

But here’s the question: Joey may be your uncle, but there’s still some satisfaction in being the one to chastise him. Is that satisfaction proof of that gold heart Shawn said you have? Or is it the schadenfreude of a demon? Is there anything you said that went too far?

Y ou’re shaking. You’re sick. Your panic is mounting again.

You don’t want to think about this any more.

Joey’s hanging his head. “ Sorry. You’re right of course. Both of you.”

W ho even thinks of something like that as a solution?

“Breathe. I know I work here, but I wouldn’t join this company if I were you. You lose more than you gain. Go get yourself calmed down and then find work somewhere else.” Tom points to a door.

I t’s eight steps to the door. You stagger those eight.

You turn the doorknob, and before you’ve fully opened the door, you hear Cat and Alice  talking.  Cat is saying, “-be true, do ye think the good of his present can erase that evil past?  His soul be evil, me heartie. ”

A re they talking about you?  No, they shouldn’t be. They know you’re coming. You could walk in any time.

“But Henry did the same thing! He’s good now.”

Y ou push the door open  and find yourself surrounded by Toons.  It’s not just Cat and Alice in there.  Alice is pouring water from a kettle, but Cat is with Diggie, and the two of them are cutting and arranging rice crispy treats on a platter. Pearly  is fussing with the cushions of an armchair.  An  elderly wolf is sneaking a cookie from a jar.  The Butcher Gang are standing around, a magazine dangling from Barley’s hand.

B arley grits his teeth. “If  he means it, why  put it in a magazine?  That sounds like something we’ d do in an episode if we wanted to convince you we’d turned good.  We just popped in to say he definitely wants us dead. ”

E dgar tugs Charley’s suit and points to you. Squeak!

All eyes are on you.

You’re an actor, a dancer, and you’ve got talent. You like for it to be recognized – when you think you deserve it. But being in this type of spotlight? One with no script and no routine. Do you like it as much?  Does it show that you just had a meltdown?

Y ou try to smile, but the worries won’t stop running through your head – what do they think of you? Do they see you as that cartoon they used to know? That helpless little baby you became? Or do they see a young college student that Joey wants to offer the studio to, and all the responsibility for their lives and their protection with it?  You’re hot. There’s sweat on your brow, and you can only hope the Toons can’t tell. “Hi.”

D iggie turns off the stove and waves a ladle toward the Butcher Gang. “Any of you lot who aren’t supposed to be being here, get out!”

“Make us!”

G ripping the ladle like a fencing sword, Diggie parries toward Charley. The gang runs around the room, Diggie in pursuit.  They dive under a table. Diggie follows them over it.

The other Toons scatter.

During the confusion,  Alice takes your arm and leads you to the armchair.  It’s a bit stiff, but  it’s much cushier than the wooden chair in Uncle Joey’s office.

Y ou sit back as Alice goes back to the kettle. You keep breathing and trying to relax.

But t he  elderly wolf comes  over  to you. “Bendy, do you remember me?  It’s Boris.  Tom got his machine working.  Any of us get Detooned, as long as we survive, we can be changed back.”

I f Bell comes after the Toons again, you don’t think he’ll leave them alive.  You  look at the table. “ I ain’t up for this right now.”

“You can be changed back too. We can be best pals again.”

D oes he expect you to give up your humanity?

Y ou don’t think Boris wants to hear it, but you don’t  even  remember being a Toon. All you would have to go back to is a permanent status as a minor. Sure, you wouldn’t be responsible for keeping everyone safe, but you haven’t made that choice yet. You wouldn’t have all the rights you have now either.

Or any you might be getting.

This studio alone is worth millions.  It’s not the only property Uncle Joey has either.

But  D iggie is still chasing the Butcher Gang around, and that’s how you know: if you  take Uncle Joey up on his offer to make you his heir, you’ll be defending a bunch of Toons who think it’s good self-defense to hide their face behind their hands and stand out in the open.

Y ou’ll be defending a bunch of Toons dumb enough to fall for that too.

Someone sets a cold glove on your shoulder. It’s Alice. With her other hand, she’s setting a steaming mug in front of you.

You think it’s coffee at first, but there’s a string hanging over the edge that says  _chamomile_ .

“Ken? Bendy? What do you want me to call you?”

I s it easy to choose the name you’ve been going by for the last eighteen years? Or is it hopeless, being that you’re here? Should you be asked to choose between the two identities?

“Call me whatever you want.” You pick up the tea and watch it steep. “Thanks.”

Y ou can still see Alice’s face in the corner of your eye. It’s going red.

“You’re welcome.”

It’s tempting to be Uncle Joey’s heir, just for the money. It’s tempting to walk away because it’s easier.  The question is, is it worth it? And, if you choose, are you up for such a challenge?

N o one at the studio wants to make you commit to anything so big without thinking things over, so you’re sent back to your dorm with the folder and your  new plushies.  You can review things as needed. At the back of the folder are several options and ideas that Uncle Joey has for you.

T here’s a space beside your bed that you can  hide the folder away from prying eyes.  You take it out only when you’re alone and read things over from your lumpy college mattress, wrapped in your thick comforter.

Your options for defense : gun training, martial arts lessons, a Bendy costume made  with Kevlar,  and/or a personal security squad .

Your options for a job with Joey Drew Studios :  general acting and coach,  playing yourself  and campaigning for your reputation back, and at the end, a scribbled  _business intern._

And one last item – a new Polaroid. It’s you in the cafeteria, in the center of Boris, Cat, and Alice. All of whom have their arms around you.

You don’t have to take  Uncle Joey up on any thing .  Can you live with that? Or is it the only way you can live?  You’ve got to make a decision in the next few days.

So what do you do?

What do you do?

What do you do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seriously, you choose the ending. What do you do?


End file.
